Time and Time Again
by Oldach's Dream
Summary: It’s that episode where the bank keeps exploding. Sort of. Story now complete.
1. Chapter 1

Time and Time Again 

By: Oldach's Dream

Summary: It's that episode where the bank keeps exploding. Sort of.

A/N: Set before Croatoan. I started writing this way before we knew the Sam's-destined-to-be-evil-and-Dean-might-have-to-kill-him secret, so as far as this fic is concerned, John died - the end.

Disclaimer: Oh, yeah, I own 'em. Wanna see the tricks I taught them? They can actually hug now. No, I wish. Really - if you recognize it, Erik Kripke created it. I also don't own any of the quotes. I'm just a clepto.

I love knowing what people think, so review, review, review no matter what you have to say. I wanna hear it.

And no, this **isn't **a death-fic, not in the traditional sense, anyway, and I'm gonna leave it at that.

I do believe that's all I wanna say before this thing starts rolling - so enjoy!

Chapter One 

---------------

"_Life is made up of moments that mean nothing, and moments that mean it all." -Unknown._

---------------

"I'm tellin' you, Sammy," Dean smirked at his little brother over his coffee. "This'll be a friggin' cakewalk."

"Every time you say that, we usually end up close to death."

"Girl." Dean mocked.

"Idiot." Sam bit back. "You just wanna shoot something. You're going into this blind."

"I've been hunting for over two decades, Sam," Dean pointed out in that way he had that _almost _made him sound still mad at Sam for his lost four years at Stanford. "I think I know a common haunting when I see it."

"Only you haven't seen it," Sam pointed out. "We've read about it-"

"And heard it."

Sam rolled his eyes but conceded, "And heard it. But we haven't _seen _a thing."

"What?" Dean snorted sarcastically, "You want Casper to introduce himself before we can waste him?"

"No," Sam tried to defend himself, but Dean was having none of it.

"'Cause I hate to break it to you, cupcake," he ducked his head down and glanced around their table dramatically, making sure none of the other restaurant patrons could hear him, "but," he raised a hand to the side of his mouth, "They're not _really _friendly."

"Shove off," Sam pushed his brother's shoulder roughly, just adding fuel to Dean's laughing fit as he sat up straighter.

_Now _they were getting unwanted attention.

"Look," Dean conceded after a waitress passed their table and shot them a particularly nasty glare, "If it'll make you feel better, you can do some more research."

"Good," Sam sounded victorious, "I will."

"But I'm going to that building tonight, to dig the grave and burn the body." He appraised Sam with unconcerned eyes, "Come, if you think that cast won't get in the way of your half of the digging."

"Seriously?" Sam deadpanned. "We've been here for less than a day - and you want to dig the grave now?"

"Unless you wanted to have a chat with the guy first."

"It's almost dark now," Sam pointed out, ignoring Dean's quip.

"Huh," his big brother pretended - for half a second - to consider it, "Then I guess we better get a movin'."

"Back to the motel so I can do research," his voice held no real hope. "Right?"

"So _you _can do research while _I _go dig up a body."

And both could be done in the same general expanse of land - as the haunting that Dean seemed so keen to throw himself into just happened be located a couple hundred feet away from their crap-ass motel.

"Research and hunting simultaneously doesn't really make sense." The younger of the two couldn't help but mention. And yeah, he was digging himself a hole, but so what? Dirt was cheap.

"Good point," Dean mocked. "Guess you'll just hafta come with me."

He opened his mouth to protest, but Dean just interjected with, "I won't make you dig, but you're totally the distraction if we need one."

With that final thought, he stood, picking up their check to take to the front register, almost missing Sam's sarcastically uttered, "Goody,"

"Buck up, Sammy," Dean patted him on the shoulder once he stood. "I'll bet ya anything we'll be all done and at a bar by midnight."

---------------

_Anything._

Sam would have taken a prime rib steak - bake potato and the works on the side.

He would have taken a week's worth of being able to pick the music played in the Impala.

He would have liked a go at Gordon - the memory of the other hunter still got to him, and Sam often regretted not being able to take part of the final ass-kicking that inevitably took place that night.

A real vacation would be nice.

A chance to drive the Impala more than once a month.

Perhaps a copy of _Psychic Powers for Dummies - the Demon Edition. _

There were a few moments of his past he wouldn't mind erasing.

A couple decisions he'd like to redo.

A person or two that he kinda wanted back.

But mostly, for Sam, that _anything _would be another chance.

A chance to make it right.

---------------

_"I said to Life, I would hear Death speak. And Life raised her voice a little higher and said, You hear him now?" -Kahlil Gibran_

---------------

"Oh god," Sam choked. "Oh god, oh god."

He held his brother's head in his lap. Rivers of tears and blood cascading down his face in steadily ignored streams.

"God," he'd turned it from a curse, a pointless rambling, to a prayer. "Please. No. No."

"Sammy?" Dean gurgled through thick blood, spilling out of his mouth dangerously.

"Dean," he gasped. "Hang on, big brother." He ordered it, demanded it, begged for it. "We called 911. Help's coming, okay? Just hang on."

The broken man's one working eye opened a slit- more raw emotion in that one fraction of a glace than Sam had ever seen before. _Ever._

It made his heart stop.

This was the end.

And he knew it.

"No," he rebelled against his own thoughts. "Just hold on, man. Please, just-" but he cut himself off, knowing that if he said another word then, he wouldn't survive it.

Dean lifted a bloodied arm, his hand instinctually finding his brother's face, his eye having closed again.

The rough, calloused fingers ran from his temple to his chin, Sam closed his own eyes, not wanting to be in the moment any longer, and escape came through his big brother's gentle touch.

"You're hurt," Dean choked, the words sounding frighteningly primitive.

"No," Sam corrected. "I'm fine."

"Blood," he whispered.

"Not on my hands, not on yours," he didn't know what he was saying. Not really. It's like he was speaking for someone else. "We're fine,"

" 'm'ired."

"Stay awake, Dean," Sam pleaded, clasping his brother's hand in both of his.

He knew he was in trouble when Dean didn't respond to the pain he knew he must be causing the broken appendage.

"...can't..." he gurgled again, Sam shut his eyes, opened them, shut them again.

This couldn't be real.

This was not happening.

Delusion. Nightmare. Vision. Really bad movie.

He didn't care. Just _not _reality.

"I need you, Dean." He was desperate. "And I love you. You hear that? I love you, you fucking asshole. So don't you _dare _die."

"...'orry..." he mumbled, probably not even hearing himself.

"I love you, big brother." His mind raced, needing to fill in the emptiness before anything else had a chance to. "And I owe you twenty bucks. Remember, when we met Sarah? I need to give that back to you."

No response.

"And the car. You...I can't drive the Impala. I can't. It's yours."

Silence.

"I stole your favorite Zeppelin shirt, when we got into that pranking war when we were kids. I was gonna give it back after all my hair grew back, but I lost it."

A sound, a minuscule shift.

"Don't give up, Dean." So much desperate love that Sam thought for sure that it would be enough, that it'd become so thick and solid that his brother would be able to cling to it.

And perhaps he did.

Perhaps that last second, that last whispered, "...'ight...Sammy," was just a couple extra moments he wasn't meant to have.

And perhaps his heart didn't just shatter into hundreds of thousands of tiny pieces.

Perhaps his world didn't just end.

TBC...


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two 

_---------------_

_"A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen." -Edward de Bono _

_---------------_

Sam Winchester woke up with a gasp.

And not a _Crap, reality really snuck up on me _gasp, like he was used to.

No, it was a full blown _Thank god for air, 'cause I've been suffocating for the last decade or two _gasp.

It certainly caught Dean's attention, in any case - enough to pull him hard and quick from his slumber.

"Sam," he said sharply to his brother, who was already upright, sitting at a ninety degree angle that shouldn't really be possible ever - much less right after waking.

If you could call it that.

"What's wrong?"

Dean ended up next to him on the bed when he didn't respond, and only a firm hand on the shoulder seemed to shake him from his trance.

Breathless, but better, he managed, "Huh?"

"What the hell was that?" His own voice sounded shakier than it should have, and Dean knew - the deep feeling in his gut that never lied about Sam, telling him- that his brother wasn't okay.

"I...I don't know," the younger man got out, eyes unfocused and staring at the wall in front of him. Not the brother next to him.

"It looked like a nightmare," he kept his tone calm and rational this time, always needing to be in control of something in situations like this.

"Yeah," Sam agreed, and slouched a little, seeming to re-enter reality a little bit at a time.

"Or a vision," he couldn't help but add, and when he didn't get a reaction, he pressed, "Sam?"

"I don't know," he spoke in a broken tone that scared Dean. "I...don't remember."

Silence fell.

Dean placed a hand on his brother's back, rubbing a little, in circles, like he had when they were children.

Something wasn't right.

_---------------_

It took Sam most of the early morning hours to retreat out of his post-traumatic shell and finally share the vague details of the dream that he did recall with his big brother.

_Nothing specific._

_Blood._

_Pain._

_Darkness._

"So," Dean tried his damnedest to make light of the situation. Make it less than it so obviously was. "Just like any other hunt, right?"

_Death._

A pause that lasted forever or so, before, "Oh."

_---------------_

Dean decided it was time for a vacation.

Sam decided it was time for a break.

They had been staying in a small town - El Groton - located in the heart of New Mexico. They hadn't been there for any particular reason, but now - as Dean had decided - it was their new vacation spot.

Poetically, it was almost the exact same place they'd been a thousand and one times before. The town itself was slightly larger than a few they'd seen in their time, what with it's three or four real restaurants - not counting the McDonalds - it's hospital, playground, two churches and school. But still, it could be classified easily as classic small town America; it wasn't a city.

One small group of intertwining individuals making up the network of each other's lives.

The repetitiveness of their lives could not be denied, yet there was comfort in those small things only found when you weren't really looking.

Small population towns.

Deserted roads.

Quiet nights.

Starry skies.

Chirping crickets.

No crime.

Family - only that one wasn't so small. And not nearly as easy to find.

Except now.

Because all the family Sam had left in the world was lying next to him in a familiar motel room, watching the sun peek out above a flat expanse of desert land, painting long shadows on their dusty world.

_---------------_

"We need gas," Dean mumbled as he pulled up to the pump.

Their official window of time off had started late that morning after Sam had announced that there was no way he was going back to sleep, and Dean had agreed.

Now, Sam was nodding at his brother and relaxing back into the cool leather of the Impala. With the windows rolled down and the interior unusually clean, the car felt different.

The Impala always felt like home to Sam - in the same way being with his brother, open road expanding before them, did- not that he'd ever say that aloud, lest a chick flick moment abound.

But it'd felt like a different kind of home recently. One that did more than simply protect them from the dangers of the outside world. It provided something more, and it was driving away a few of the demons that had latched onto his subconscious last night.

He figured being with Dean would take care of the rest.

Deciding then that he needed to stop thinking so intensely, he got out of the car to stretch tired muscles; his joints cracked and popped at the movement.

"So," Sam called over the hood to his brother, who was still pumping gas, the smell of which was all too familiar as he took a deep breath of small town air. "What do people do on vacations, anyway?"

Dean rolled his eyes, "Most people don't vacation in New Mexico, Sammy," And it must have been the eighth or ninth time his brother had called him _Sammy _so far, but he didn't mind. Not today.

He didn't want to think about it anymore, but couldn't help recalling the nightmare that had started this little bout of time off. It had truly shaken Dean - to the core. Because Dean didn't take time off, and he certainly didn't _suggest _taking time off. Yet here they were.

"Whattda _we _do on vacation, then?" He rephrased, enjoying - needing to focus on - the lightheartedness of it all too much to really pick apart the what's and why's any longer.

"I dunno," he shrugged, eyes getting far away for a brief moment, before settling on Sam again. "You hungry?"

He laughed a little. Dean was lost. But hey, so was he. "Yeah."

"Good, let's grab some breakfast."

"Want me to go inside and pay?" Sam gestured to the building of the gas station.

Dean considered it, peering into the dingy window inconspicuously, "Nah," he decided. "She looks hot."

"Of course," Sam rolled his eyes. "Because your civil manners are on vacation too, right?"

"You're just jealous, little man," and Dean took off, striding confidently towards the building. Sam had no doubt he would come back with a phone number.

The younger man just grinned and shook his head, getting back in the car and slamming the door with ease.

Their morning proceeded on accordingly.

TBC...


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

_---------------_

_"One need not be a chamber to be haunted;  
One need not be a house;  
The brain has corridors surpassing  
Material place." -Time and Eternity by Emily Dickinson_

_---------------_

Breakfast had ended up being lunch - because Sam had wanted McDonalds and Dean had wanted to make his brother happy, and mostly because the person who created the 'Breakfast ends at 10 in the morning' rule was a friggin' idiot.

"Shoulda gotten a Happy Meal," Dean grumbled.

"Why?" Sam smirked through a mouth full of Big Mac, "You wanna steal the toy?"

"That could be taken to mean so many nasty things, little brother," he shook his head ruefully, shoving his own mouth with fries.

They sat at a table by a window, and sunlight filtered in. Neither was bothered by its brightness.

"Gutter mind," the younger man accused.

"I'm just sayin'..."

Their morning was good.

_---------------_

Lunch was consumed as they walked down the street.

"I told ya Hot Dog stands were good," Dean smirked as Sam took another bite of his order with the works - Dean's insistence.

They'd spent all day wandering around El Groton. It hadn't been the plan, but the town wasn't as uninteresting as they'd both imagined it was.

There was an impressive bookstore that - while up front you saw nothing but Bestsellers and cheesy romances- that Sam had to forcibly drag Dean away from - if you made it into the backroom, it harbored quite a few useful older texts.

Sam got a couple new translation books; Latin, runes, ancient Gaelic...all that fun stuff. Then drifted off to look at the classics while Dean shifted through the paranormal section - a lot of it was crap, but he'd struck gold with two texts - continuations of each other -about demons and possessions and...well, a big, hunkin' chunk of it was in other languages, but hey, he had his own personal geek boy translator, right?

He'd found Sammy at one of the tables scattered about the store, pouring over some Law Text book when he went to show him what he'd discovered; and for a brief, but vividly outlined, moment he was seeing Sam at Stanford. He was seeing his baby brother where he belonged. In his element. Learning, absorbing all there was to know so he could use it. To help. To be happy.

His heart broke a little when Sam placed that book back on its shelf before they left.

What exactly was he taking his brother away from?

"Dude, what?" Sam had noticed something was up.

"Nothing," he'd shrugged, and they'd gone back to their day, already in progress. Almost forgetting.

"Forgive me for not trusting something that someone on the side of the road cooks," Sam's statement would have been more dramatic had he not been polishing off that _something _and taking a final swig of the pop that he'd also gotten _from the side of the road_ as he said it.

As they passed a garbage can, he tossed the, now empty, pop bottle and hot dog wrapper in carelessly.

Dean followed suit and they walked in silence another few paces; then the brothers were belching loudly and in almost perfect unison.

Because boys will, as dad had always said, be boys.

_---------------_

Dinner was supposed to be at an honest to God restaurant.

Or, well, Bob Evans - but that was more of a restaurant environment than the Winchesters ever saw, so they could easily consider it as such.

But on the way there - at about nine that night, because no one could dwindle time quite like two brothers who were used to being awake all night digging graves and chasing baddies - they'd passed an old Cineplex.

The kind of ancient looking movie theater that sometimes existed in quaint small towns - the sort of place that only showed classic movies, and often played double features.

And there, lit up bright on their rundown Features display:

The Exorcist

Amityville Horror

Sam and Dean had stopped dead in their tracks - no pun intended. They'd looked at each other for a solid second or two, and walked in without speaking a word.

How could they not?

Just...how?

The theater was more full than Sam had expected and he'd had to smack his brother upside the head several times for talking, and by talking, he meant _critiquing, _the entirety of both movies.

Over and over, it was, _No, see that would never happen..._

_Why would he do that, when..._

_Geez, that's not even Latin..._

In the end though, Dean had Sam cracking up, and the younger sibling had come out of it wondering how in the hell he'd been scared of _The Exorcist _when he'd first seen it.

"You _were _only six," Dean comforted.

"Yeah," Sam snorted, "And I only saw it because _you _let me." He said it accusingly.

"You begged." Dean informed, laughing carelessly.

"I didn't know it'd be terrifying." Sam protested in mock seriousness.

"Hey," he dulled it down to a chuckle, "I thought it was important that you get a solid idea of what it was we did for a living. You know, I considered it an educational video."

"Yeah," Sam balked, with nothing even resembling real anger. "In twenty-three years I have yet to see a little girl projectile vomit pea soup"

"You never know," Dean shrugged. "Stranger things have happened."

And God, if he had any inkling of the amount of foreshadowing that statement possessed.

TBC...


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

_---------------_

"_We are afraid of the enormity of the possible."  
-Emile M. Cioran_

_---------------_

Dinner ended up being...

There are so many words that could go there. So much to drag out, to explain.

But let's just go with honest.

Dinner was tragic.

It was a serving of the unbelievable for an appetizer.

A large helping of brief hope and irrefutable pride, for the main course.

Dessert was bloody and frightening.

And when it was all over - only one brother walked out alive.

_---------------_

It was nearing two in the morning when Sam and Dean left the Cineplex, and Bob Evans was, undoubtedly, closed. So they walked around for a little while - loving, more than either would ever admit, the warm weather - searching for an all-night diner.

Because back country roads and small towns were their domain, and they knew there would be one.

And they'd been right.

Small establishment.

Cranky waitress.

Only two other occupants - and even that was a lot, given the hour.

Greasy food.

Home.

And they'd been happy.

Until the man came in.

Tall, unshaven, long, greasy black hair and wearing biker boots. Sam had seen him, Dean had smelled him. "Someone should tell him his B.O.'s not very restaurant friendly," the older man had grumbled, not even turning in his seat to get a look at him. Sam smirked and focused again on his burger.

Seconds later the foul smelling man had drawn the gun. Sam's eyes went to him, and obviously some sort of distressed looked passed over his features, because Dean's expression became suddenly hardened as he turned - reflexes lightening quick from years of training.

"Money," the man's tone was low, but demanding, he had the weapon pointed at the skinny, bleach-blonde woman who had served them their food. Her eyes were round and already brimming with frightened tears. "Now!"

"Just do what he says," Dean instructed when the woman stayed still - seemingly frozen - and Sam remained calm - as much as he wanted to panic, he couldn't. Was taught by John Winchester how to react in any given situation; and while this certainly wasn't typical of their life, it possessed all the same core factors of the situations they were used to.

Something was attacking.

Something needed to be gotten rid of.

And someone needed protecting.

Dean was just trying to figure out how to that as smoothly as possible, and Sam figured he ought to help out.

So his gaze darted to the other two patrons still seated on the other side of the diner. They were two women, one slightly older than the other, with incredibly similar features, and Sam guessed; sisters.

Only the older one, with long brown hair, a worn face and a scuffed leather jacket, didn't look nearly as frightened as the younger one did. In fact, she wasn't watching the impending robbery at all. Her eyes were focused solely on _Sam_.

She looked something like suspicious.

"... don't have the key to the safe..." the younger brother heard the girl at the counter say desperately, and was brought back to that side of reality.

"Like hell you don't!" The man barked, and Sam looked at Dean for guidance.

Only Dean looked a little lost, and it was then that Sam remembered he wasn't packing. No guns, no knives, no weapons at all. They had had nothing to hunt, nothing was supposed to go wrong.

The man raised his gun higher and cocked the trigger.

The Winchesters stood.

They couldn't let an innocent girl die.

They just couldn't.

What happened next was a blur of motion. Events so thoroughly compounded together that it was next to impossible to dissect the thoughts of any one person.

Especially the brothers, because they were acting on instinct, and instinct alone.

Just as the man was about to pull the trigger, Dean lunged, tackling him to the floor; and Sam grabbed opportunity when he saw it, flying to his brother's side and kicking the man in the ribs as soon as he hit the dingy tile and then turning back and motioning for the waitress to duck down and call the police.

Dean continued to pound on him, and the man could do little but defend himself, holding up his hands as a pathetic shield. Sam rounded his attention back to the fight and was just about to move around his body, to stomp on his hand and make him release the gun, when it happened.

It was as if this man were somehow drawing energy from the unrelenting attack, taking in Dean's strength only to use it against him; because in one moment, when his brother had lifted his arm to get another hit in, the man darted his head to the left, throwing the eldest Winchester off when he went to strike.

He managed to gain enough leverage to sucker punch Dean, so hard and fast that Sam could hear the crack of his jaw - which was saying something, considering how loud the waitress's crying had become.

It was enough, and he managed to get another punch in at once - not noticing his own broken face. Sam was stepping in, ready for combat already.

But the man saw him.

Dean was on the floor, having moved the fight away from Sam at some point, now too many feet away to do anything.

Sam was standing, eyes locked with a madman.

And the madman lifted his gun in slow motion; smiling a dangerous yellow smile.

Then the gun went off.

_---------------_

"_I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity." -Gilda Radner_

_--------------_

It was only broken fragments of recollection after that.

Exploding pain as stars danced in his direct line of vision.

More pain as he made contact with the floor clumsily.

A yell, "Sammy!"

Some screaming, loud cracks, another gunshot.

Sam could put together what happened, but was too focused on the blood to take much interest in it. His hands were over his stomach, and they were red.

Covered with sticky, bright red...blood.

Then Dean was at his side.

"Hey, little brother," his voice was shaky, and Sam tried so hard to focus on his face - those green eyes that never lied. But he couldn't, and it was hard to try, too hard - so he just went for sound. And touch.

Because he was resting against Dean now, his strong hands were over Sam's, trying to stop the flow of blood. He didn't know how he got in this position, but was glad for it. So grateful that he wouldn't be alone.

"Call 911!" Dean shouted orders, not at Sam, so the younger man knew he didn't have to listen.

Then there was more pressure over the bleeding and he finally saw - towels, already stained with blood. The diner floor - bloody. The madman...

"Is he dead?" Sam managed to croak, although he wasn't sure why that'd be important.

"I don't know, Sammy," Dean's arms encircled him and Sam felt like that warmth was driving away a little of the rapidly spreading coldness. "Hey, little brother, stay awake."

"'m'awake," he mumbled, closing his eyes all the same. "'m'old."

"You're losing a lot of blood," his voice was so scared. Sam had never liked it when Dean was scared - it threw his whole world off kilter. "But it's okay," he managed, "'Cause an ambulance is coming, and I'm your blood type, remember? How convenient dad always thought that was? So it'll be okay."

"'m, sorry," he muttered, although he wasn't really sure why. The word _alone _floated around, but God, was he tired.

"...nothing to apologize for," Sam started when he realized Dean's voice was fading in and out. "You gotta stay with me, alight kiddo?"

He fought to hold onto Dean. Fought so hard...

"I love you, you fucking bitch. Is that what you wanted to hear?" Something strong tickled the far reaches of his subconscious, but it was too far away to help him now.

"...gonna fix this. Dad told me to...gonna be alright."

"...'ove you too..." Sam gasped, "...'jerk..."

He heard Dean chuckle a little, and Sam knew he was crying. He'd meant to say something else too, but couldn't remember what it was in time.

Because the world was fading, Dean's protective embrace was disappearing, and the whole scene - despite his closed eyes - was tunneling. His brother holding him, the crying waitress, a fallen madman.

The sisters. The younger one had her head buried in the thin black leather jacket of the elder, whose expression was some surreal mix of disbelief, doubt and...hope.

Then it was all dark, and he was gone.

TBC...


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

_---------------_

_"Footfalls echo in the memory  
Down the passage which we did not take  
Towards the door we never opened." -T.S. Eliot _

_---------------_

Sam woke feeling wide awake, alert -like he hadn't been sleeping at all, just blinking as a shift occurred - and oddly relieved.

He sat up, studying his surroundings strangely - same small motel room they'd been in since late last night. Same gray wallpaper with a few too many cigarette burns, same flimsy, tinfoiled together TV antenna.

"Dude, the hell?" Same cranky big brother.

"Nothin'" Sam mumbled, throwing the blanket back and swinging his legs over the side of his still too thin mattress. Dean was already awake, cleaning guns - artillery spread out before him on the motel bed.

To the untrained eye it would look scattered about, everything placed at odd angles and in mismatched piles. But Sam knew guns, and Sam knew his big brother - and he was sure beyond all shadow of a doubt that, if a threat should arise, Dean would know the exact location of every single metal piece and part well enough to throw it back together in time to save both their asses - and laugh about bad timing afterwards.

"Sure," Dean snorted sarcastically - and Sam realized that his brother thought he was shutting him out, and wondered absently if he hadn't been making distressed sounds in his sleep.

"Nah, it was nothing," he shrugged, yawning and trying to sound casual, "I just had a weird dream."

"Weird like, demon weird?" Dean questioned. "Or weird like, I spent all night watching midget porn weird?"

Sam's face screwed up and he tossed a pillow in the elder man's direction, shaking his head - torn between disgust and entertainment. "Had a lot of midget porn dreams?"

Dean just smirked, looking down and using Sam's pillow as a work bench for the gun he was on. Sam allowed himself a moment to chuckle disbelievingly.

Then Dean looked up again and his face was cautious, carefully stoic with just a hint of concern. "Was it, though?" He pressed. "Demon weird?"

"No," Sam shook his head and thought it would be left at that, but Dean kept staring, raising his eyebrows after a couple moments, and Sam bit his lip. "It was just..." he shook his head again, "I don't know how to explain it."

"Try," the word was a precious blend of demand and plea and Sam figured, after all the dreams he'd kept to himself the year Jessica died, he probably owed his brother this one. Plus, as Dean threw in, "It might be important."

He ran a hand through his hair, and tried. "I don't really remember the dream, but...You know, after a hunt that goes kinda bad, when one of us gets hurt..." he trailed off questioningly.

Dean's face got hard, but he nodded shortly.

"After a night like that, do you ever wake up the next morning and feel, you know...relieved, kind of calm. 'Cause for just a second you remember the night before and you're not sure if everything's okay?"

"Yeah, Sam," Dean swallowed thickly, looking pained, and the younger brother was starting to regret his decision to partake in share time. "I know that feeling."

"I woke up feeling like that," he admitted, looking down at stained motel sheets. "So I think the dream was bad."

Dean was silent for a while - for so long that Sam thought for sure they were done talking. In fact, he was about to stand up and announce his claim to the shower, but Dean halted his thoughts.

"Don't you usually remember your dreams?" His voice was curious and Sam faltered.

"Huh?"

"I mean, normal or supernatural, you usually remember them, right?"

Sam shook his head, not getting why Dena's voice was inquisitive now. "Yeah, I guess..." he thought about it. "Yeah. Why?"

"I dunno," he shrugged, "Don't you think that's weird?"

"Yeah, I do," he agreed easily, as he had already stated that in various forms of dialogue once or twice this morning, "But what are we supposed to do about it?"

"I don't know, Sam." Dean snapped, and looked like he was about to say something else, but stopped himself. "I don't know."

"Look," the younger man struggled to clear his own mind. "It was probably _just _a weird dream. Too many nachos last night."

"Yeah," Dean sounded disappointed. "I guess."

"Okay. Good." A slight pause, then, "I'm gonna take a shower."

"Kay," Dean nodded and went back to his guns.

Sam stood, stretched, ruffled through his duffel bag, plucking out articles of clothing and headed for the door to the bathroom

Dean called to him just before he got there, "Oh and Sammy," the brother in question turned and looked over impatiently, "You do know there's a ghost haunting that old farmhouse out back, right?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Yeah, Dean. I did figure that one out all by myself."

"Just checking," he assured; then an almost audible click as Dean's face lit up. "Hey, maybe your dream had something to do with that."

Sam shrugged, "Maybe. Can I take a shower now? I'll look it up when I get out." He gestured to the laptop, sitting innocently on the nightstand between the two beds

Dean nodded, sighing exaggeratingly, "Fine."

Sam stepped in and closed the door behind him, not missing his brother's loud yell of, "No jacking off!"

Oh, what a fun day this was bound to be.

_---------------_

_"The dead, if not separated from the living, bring madness upon them." -Nykusa proverb _

_---------------_

"Okay..." Sam dragged the word out, knowing his brother was getting impatient, but not really caring. His shaggy hair was still dripping wet from the shower he'd been pulled from by the banging on the bathroom door, compliments of his big brother.

"The bitch is howling again," he'd screamed in reference to the dead guy out back, sounding annoyed.

"I'm kinda in the middle of something," Sam had hollered back.

"Now what did I tell you, little brother?" And Sam could practically see the finger ticking back and forth.

So now, the youngest of the Winchesters sat cross-legged on the bed, electronically digging through old El Groton newspapers.

"Okay, what?" Dean snapped. "You find anything?"

"I could teach _you _how to use the computer," Sam threatened, still staring at the screen. "Then you could do this crap every once in a while."

Sam would swear, to any higher power that happened to ask, that he was actually able to _hear _Dean roll his eyes at that. "Just get on with it, geek."

"Well, since you asked so nice," Sam made a few last clicks and looked up. "It's haunted."

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Dean barked. "Haunted by what?"

"A ghost."

"_And_?"

"And nothing," Sam shrugged. "Guy shot himself just 'bout fifty years ago, when the government was planning on taking ownership of this whole town and turning it into a giant research facility or something."

"That just screams X-files," Dean noted with a raised eyebrows and slightly protruding bottom lip.

"Huh," Sam considered it. "I was thinking Roswell."

Dean made a thoughtful face and shrugged, Sam continued on, "Anyway, the government changed their mind at the last minute, but..."

"But it was too late for our pal, Casper?" Dean guessed.

"Jim Paulman," Sam nodded. "He's been haunting this place since then, locals just kinda got used to him, I guess. Or never noticed. There's nothing in here about any disturbances he might have caused. Nothing in here at all, really. Boring town. Or bad reporting."

"Why didn't the guy checking us in last night mention him? I mean, if people around here do know about him?"

Sam quirked an eyebrow, "Hi, here's your room key, I can sell you a map of our town for four ninety five, oh and by the way, you're gonna be sleeping a hundred yards away from a pissed off ghost?"

"Who says he's pissed off?" Dean diverted the attention away from his obviously stupid question. "You said it yourself, he's not hurting anyone."

Then, like on cue, their motel room walls shook as if being assaulted by a massive gust of wind, and an unearthly moan echoed around them.

"_That's _why you had that weird dream," Dean pointed angrily at the wall. "That stupid fuck who _Never shuts up!" _The last words were yelled at the same wall he was gesturing to.

Sam chuckled lightheartedly, "Okay, he's an annoying bitch, but you're right, as far as I can tell, he's never really caused any damage. Never hurt anyone. Again, boring."

"Great," Dean snorted, "We're still gonna waste him."

"I know," Sam sighed. "It'll be a friggin' cakewalk, too. The guy's even buried back there."

"Yahoo," his brother sounded the opposite of enthused. "We still gotta wait until tonight."

"Yeah," Sam agreed, studying the older man. "You act like not having anything to do for a day is gonna kill you."

"It might." Dean grumbled.

Sam allowed himself a laugh at his brother's expense before getting up and stretching. "Let's head into town," he suggested. "See if they've got a bookstore. I need something with Irish translations."

Dean snorted, very unbecomingly, but stood as well. "Why?" He asked, "You've got like, two dozen translation books already."

"I have three," Sam corrected, "And none of them have ancient Irish conjugations that I need for the stuff Ash found last month. In fact, none of my stuff has anything for any ancient language at all."

"Ancient, normal," Dean shrugged to himself. "It's all the same, right?"

Sam looked at him like he was crazy. "Dude. That's like saying Latin's the same as... Celtic, or something."

"Isn't Celtic ... ah, you know..." he twisted his wrist around. "Those Irish knot tattoos. Man those things can be hot." He let out a deep breath as his eyes got far away and he bit the side of his lip.

"It's a subfamily of Indo-European languages." He took one look at his brother's face and promptly gave up. "You know what? Never mind. I do the research for a reason. Just trust me when I say I need a book."

"Fine," Dean breathed, and began rummaging through his duffel bag. "Geek."

"Bitch." Sam shot back, shaking his head and shrugging at Dean's back. He gave his brother a few minutes of ruffling around before inquiring, "Whattdya looking for?"

"Car keys." Came the grunt.

"Let's just walk," Sam suggested, "It's only about ten feet into the main part of town."

Dean shrugged agreeably and followed Sam out the door.

Just another normal day in the life of the Winchester brothers.

TBC...


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

---------------

_"Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food." Austin O'Malley _

_---------------_

"You shoulda just bought the damn thing if you wanted it," Dean continued to gripe.

"I told you," Sam's patience with this issue was wearing so incredibly thin. "I didn't want it."

"You sure did look sad when you had to part with it," Dean argued still.

"It was a book," Sam reminded, a book which he'd picked up without thinking, started reading out of habit and just a little bit of nostalgia, and now wished he'd never seen before. "It was just a stupid law book, so would you drop it already?"

"Hey, it's dropped," Dean held up his hands in a placating gesture.

"Thank you," Sam bit, now in a foul mood.

"I'm just saying, if you wanna go back to college, there are easier ways of telling me."

"Are you shitting me?" The younger man inquired, completely dumbfounded and not sure how to protect himself from this verbal assault.

"I know you're all about the subtle hints, Wise-ass," Dean sounded angrier and angrier, "But you're gonna have to dumb it down a little. Us folks who didn't waste four years with the Ivy League preps 'aint so quick with them uptakes."

"Why are you attacking me?" Sam yelled, halting in the middle of the sidewalk, long legs easily letting him step in front of his brother, putting him in his personal space and immediately he became impossible to ignore or brush off.

"_Because_." Dean said like that was the answer, then realized he'd have to expand, "Because you-"

"All I did," Sam tried not to sound as angry as he was. In fact, he made his voice agonizingly calm, "Was pick up a book. You're the one reading into this." Both silently acknowledged the pun, but were too bent out of shape with each other to point out its off-beat humor.

"Whatever," Dean shrugged and walked past him, purposely not looking in his direction.

"Yeah," Sam echoed faintly, caught between anger and astonishment, "Whatever."

_---------------_

"Randy's Diner," Dean read the sign before they entered the run-down establishment. "God, they think of the most creative names for these places, huh?"

"Whatever," was all Sam said, still pissed about his brother's earlier argument. More agitated still that the older man seemed to have just forgotten all about it.

"Stop being a moody shit," he finally did acknowledge Sam's mood - about time, considering he'd been like this since that morning.

"I'm being moody?" He couldn't help question as they sat down at a table.

"Yeah," Dean said easily.

"You're the one who picked a fight over nothing." He pointed out.

"We had a little disagreement," his brother amended, "Almost four hours ago. Let it go."

"Sure." Sam agreed, not meaning it at all. "You think they have good burgers here?"

"No."

_---------------_

About twenty minutes after they got their food. That's when it happened.

Dean was a mouthful or two away from completing his meal, Sam still had half a cheeseburger, they'd both had about three coffee refills, and they'd spoken a grand total of maybe a dozen words to each other.

That's when the woman walked in.

She wore a thin, black leather jacket that looked battered and not at all useful for protection against the elements; which was okay, Sam figured, because hey, it was New Mexico, and there weren't really any elements.

Her dark brown hair was long - mid-back long - and wavy, she wore loose jeans and a dark top that peaked out beneath the coat. She was older, probably two or three years older than Dean. She looked it anyway, the lines on her face gave away the presence of a trying life.

It was impossible for Sam to gauge her height accurately, because he was taller than everybody, and had thus given up thinking about people in terms of height long ago.

The only reason he noticed any of this at all, was because as soon as she entered the diner- irritating little bell above the door announcing her presence to the brothers, five other customers, and the waitress behind the cash register - she walked right over to their table.

"What are you doing here?" She asked harshly and without preamble.

Dean almost choked on the food he'd been chewing, "Trying to eat lunch," he said with a full mouth.

"I mean _here_, in this town," she looked to Sam. "What are you doing here?"

Sam was going to respond - to play his given role as the people person and try to smooth things over - but something stopped him. Her eyes. They were familiar. Dark brown and suspicious.

Sam had seen those eyes before.

"What's it to you, bitch?" Dean growled, he sounded mostly pissed off, but Sam detected just a hint of caution in the words.

"You're not supposed to be here." Only she was looking solely at Sam.

"Yet we are," Dean wowed her with his sarcasm some more.

"Lyn," the waitress called over to them from behind the counter. "Those guys bothering you?"

Which was just a lesson in how unfair the small town mentality could be, because it was obvious to anybody who'd been watching, that this woman - Lyn - was the instigator of the chaos.

"No," she called over her shoulder, "No, everything's fine, Heather."

The skinny, bleach-blonde waitress nodded, but kept her eyes on their table.

Lyn looked back at them, "You don't know what you're getting into."

Then she was gone.

_---------------_

"I'm not much for the cryptic," Dean scowled as they made their way through the moderately sized town and back to the motel, not knowing what else to do. "You think she was talking about Casper?"

Sam shrugged, not able to shake the creepy feeling the whole event had imprinted in him.

"Dean," he started, stopping when his brother looked at him, then sucking it up and admitting, "She looked familiar."

Dean's face scrunched up, "Ya think?" He considered it for another moment, "Looked like a bran spankin' new cast member to me." He tilted his head slightly then, "'Though now that I think about it, she did sorta resemble that chick from _Charmed_."

Sam's mind immediately went there, "Who? The one that was in those Kevin Smith movies?"

"Shannen Doherty," Dean provided the name, then shook his head. "No, the other one."

"From _Who's The Boss?_"

"Alyssa Milano," his brother filled in, nodding and smirking suggestively. "But no, the other one."

"The one who dated Marilyn Manson?" Sam had only his big brother to thank for all this useless knowledge.

"No, the-"

"If you say that again, I'm gonna kill you." Sam interrupted factually.

"The one that had the kids," Dean amended.

"In the show or in real life?"

"Dude," his brother exclaimed, "There's only one left."

Sam let his own smirk out, then thought about it, tilting his head much like Dean did when he was considering something - a trait neither ever noticed they shared. "Yeah. Yeah, she did look like...what was her name?"

"Molly?" Dean shrugged.

"Patty?" Sam shook his head, knowing he wasn't right. "Doesn't matter."

Yet the elder man still wore a concentrated expression, "Dean." Sam said loudly.

"That's just gonna bug me," he complained, pouting absently.

"That's not why she looked familiar," Sam tried to take the conversation back.

"Then what was it?" His brother pressed. "I mean, I'd ask you if it was a girl you mighta hooked up with after a few too many tequila shots, and maybe forgot about..." he shrugged, "But it's _you_, so-" Sam smacked his shoulder. "Ow."

"Never mind." He shook his head. "I've been having weird-ass deja vu all morning."

"Oh yeah?" Dean inquired lightly.

"Yeah," Sam explained. "That guy at the bookstore, I coulda sworn I've seen him before."

"Well," Dean was smiling, "True love knows no lifetime."

"Huh?"

"He was totally checking you out, man." Dean informed cockily.

"_What_?" Sam reeled disbelievingly. "No he wasn't."

"Yeah," Dean sighed. "He was. It's okay, dude." He placed hand on his shoulder. "I mean, I'm your brother, I think, if you're gonna come out to anybody-"

Sam pushed Dean's hand away forcibly and grumbled, "Whatever."

"Just don't expect me to be your wing man,"

"Shut up." Sam demanded, not liking the way his face was growing hot.

"I'm totally cool with it," his tone was mockingly sincere, "As long as I don't have to come with you to get porn."

"You planning on cutting it out?" Sam snapped. "Ever?"

"Nah," Dean shrugged. "I like to see you all hot and bothered."

"That could be taken to mean so many nasty things, man." Sam frowned when he finished saying the words.

His frown deepened when his brother responded with, "Gutter mind."

There it was - that deja vu feeling again.

"Shit, man," Dean had stopped in his tracks, bringing Sam's mind back to the present abruptly.

"What?"

"Would you look at that?" His brother pointed up, grinning like an idiot, flashing all his bright white teeth.

They'd stopped in front of one of those older, quaint, small town Cineplex's. The dingy display board had the words,

The Exorcist

Amityville Horror

Lit up bright, and that twinge of recognition tickled at the back of Sam's conscious again, only this time he ignored it, passing it off as a normal familiarity.

"We gotta go in." Dean's attitude changed in an instant, and Sam had the fleeting thought that, for his hatred of all things emotionally complex, his brother certainly could change his mood like a pre-adolescent school girl.

"No argument." Sam smiled, and at last, something at least a little normal and right happened that day.

TBC...


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

_---------------_

"Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin." -Barbara Kingsolver

_---------------_

_The hallway was dark and abandoned, and Sam didn't know which way to turn - there were so many doors. _

_Too many choices._

_He stopped at each one, reached for the knob, but knew each time that it wasn't right, and he couldn't bring himself to turn the handle and peer inside - so he kept walking. _

_He kept walking, until he heard the voices._

"_Sammy?" _

_It was his brother- sounding broken and scared. _

_Sam met that door head-on, ignoring how solid it looked, and went right for the bright red, circular handle._

_Only nothing happened. _

"_God. Please. No. No." It was his own voice this time behind the door, and hell, if he thought Dean had sounded scared, he sounded about ready to have a panic attack. _

_He wrestled with the knob harder, pushed and pulled at the barrier keeping him away from the truth, but could do nothing besides listen. _

Remember_, something far away whispered. _

"_Dean, Hang on, big brother. We called 911. Help's coming, okay? Just hang on." He sounded like he was begging, pleading._

_And he tasted blood. _

_He pounded on the door, fought to get through, hated that he was trapped. Stuck listening. _

"_...'orry..." _

_No, Sam thought. _

_Why couldn't he get the door open? Why couldn't he help?_

"_Don't give up, Dean." _

_Sam didn't know if he had whispered the words, or if he had heard himself say them through the door. _

_Or both._

_Then, over the pounding of his fist, the metal of the door handle, the thundering of his heart; it echoed all around - _

"_...'ight...Sammy," _

_---------------_

"What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can read only a few and those perhaps not accurately." -John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

_---------------_

"Dean," he gasped his brother's name desperately, sitting up and throwing the tangled covers off so quickly that he scarcely noticed himself doing so.

When he didn't get a response, his heart sped up and he fought down the bile rising in the back of his throat.

"Dean!" But the motel room echoed with emptiness. Light was streaming through the window, its brightness irritating and distracting. He stood quickly and went straight for the bathroom, the door was shut, and his hand was shaking when he lifted it to bang on the wood. "Dean!"

There was no answer. He opened the door - briefly yet undeniably relieved that he could do so - and panicked again when his brother wasn't there.

"Fuck," he mumbled, "Fuck, fuck."

Only then the front door of the motel room opened, and there was his big brother, bathed in bright sunlight, looking, well...very much alive.

"Dean," Sam gasped, and something about his voice must have reached the elder man at once, because he wasted no time shutting the door behind him and moving to get a closer look at Sam - who was now deflating ever so slightly.

"Dude," the concern was unhidden. "What's wrong?"

"Where were you?" Was all he could manage.

"I went to check out that old farmhouse outback," he explained distractedly and repeated, "What's wrong?"

He opened his mouth to explain, but couldn't manage words, so he just collapsed back onto the edge of his bed. He rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands.

"Fuck, dude," he took a deep breath, keeping his head down. "Something weird's going on."

"Bad dream?" He asked carefully, and Sam snorted humorlessly.

"I...I don't even know. I...I'm...something's messed up."

He tried to get his breathing under control and was so focused on that, now that he knew Dean was okay, he didn't exactly notice that it took an unusual amount of time for his brother to respond.

"Sam," Dean said it oddly, and the younger man held his recently regained breath.

"Sam," he said again, and there was something frighteningly familiar there.

"_Sammy?" _

That's when Sam dared to raise his head. His gaze fell first on his brother's face; his expression was distraught, a mask of pure agony.

"Sammy..." The word teetered listlessly from his lips.

Dean's hand raised slowly to the coat he was wearing, it was zipped up all the way; and Sam watched uncomprehendingly as rough fingers found the zipper and pulled slowly.

It didn't take long for Sam to see the blood.

As soon as he did, it started spreading, soaking through Dean's clothes, making his entire midsection a frighteningly bright red.

"Dean?" He croaked. He didn't know what was going on.

"_You're hurt," _his brother was looking at him, distress obvious, _"Blood," _he whispered.

"Dean," he called instinctually, watching his brother fall to the floor in slow motion. "Dean! Dean..."

_---------------_

"_In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future." -Alex Haley_

_---------------_

"Dean!" He woke up shouting, which was such a cliché, and once the reality of this situation truly soaked in, he would hate that he'd sounded that weak.

But reality was far from sinking in, and when he woke distressed, all he wanted was his brother. The screaming happened to provide that in a timely manner.

"Sammy," Dean's voice was jam-packed with alarm, and the younger man barely saw him jump from where he'd been sitting on his own bed to make it to his in record time. Just felt the mattress bend harshly as he plopped down next to him. "Hey, little brother,"

Only Sam couldn't look at his face, not yet. He grabbed at the open, button-down shirt his brother was wearing, and pulled on one side, swallowing thickly at the clean T-shirt he saw there.

Not trusting his eyes this time, he placed a hand over his brother's heart, sliding it down- once he was sure the heartbeat was there and steady- to his stomach and leaving it there long enough for his own breaths to start synching up with Dean's deeper, even ones.

No blood.

Nothing sticky or red.

It was just his brother's muscle hardened stomach.

Just Dean.

"Ah, Sammy?" His brother's voice finally broke through his hazy mind, and the younger man forced himself to believe; this time it was real. "You're scaring me a little." He tried to say it lightly, but it came out...well, it came out scared. And Sam couldn't blame him.

When he finally did look at Dean's face, he saw is brother's bright green eyes shining with worry. His emotions were unhidden for one of the first time Sam could remember since dad died; and along with his own present fear and anxiety, he couldn't help but let a little hope slip in.

Maybe the brother he had known all his life- his own personal superhero- wasn't gone for good; perhaps there was some chance left for their relationship. Because he knew Dean would do anything to save his life - go to hell and back if he had to - but it was the other stuff, the unhardened, core of who they were, that he worried about sometimes.

"Wanna talk to me?" He said it so gently that Sam could have sworn he'd reverted back to age twelve; and with the reemergence of childhood- just like when Dean had been twelve, and he'd been an eight-year-old, still afraid of the dark - Sam knew he didn't have a real choice in weather or not to talk about this one.

"I had a dream," he began, memories already swarming back in bright detail, emotions as fresh as they'd been minutes ago, and again, he found it difficult to breath.

When he couldn't say anything more, Dean urged, "Okay..."

Sam had removed his hand from Dean's stomach after he'd been good and sure that his brother wasn't bleeding, but now he sat cross-legged on the bed, his knee pressing against Dean's leg. He needed to remain in physical contact with his brother. Needed it like he needed oxygen at this point, and was so glad the elder man seemed to understand that.

"Then I woke up," he explained. "Only I wasn't awake, and you were bleeding." Shining brown eyes met deep green ones. "You were dying."

"I'm not sure I'm following you, kiddo," he tried to understand, and for that Sam was glad; because Dean was holding it together in ways he couldn't, and it was keeping him sane.

"I don't know what's real anymore," he knew he had tears in his eyes, but he couldn't...he wasn't... "I don't understand what's going on." He gasped. "I don't know what to do."

"Just breathe," Dean recommended, placing his hand on Sam's shoulder as the younger man rested his head in his hands, fighting to reign in wayward emotions. He followed his brother's advice, and took deep breaths.

"There, good," the eldest hunter mumbled random words of encouragement.

Finally, when Sam had calmed enough to breath steadily without following along with his brother, Dean said. "Tell me what happened in your dream, Sammy."

There was no room for debate there - so Sam told. Everything he remembered, everything he'd thought, every vague emotion that he'd had before truly waking - it was now Dean's to dissect as much as it was his.

"And it felt so _real_," telling the story had helped Sam anchor himself to reality more firmly, and he felt more in control now. Yet Dean's hand remained tightly locked on his shoulder, and they were still sitting close together.

"I gathered that," his brother's tone was almost back to it's normal, cocky default setting. Almost.

"I don't know what it means, Dean." Sam admitted, sounding lost.

"Me either, little brother," his eyes were a myriad of things; mostly sad. "Me either."

_---------------_

They hadn't left the motel again until dusk, and the sun set behind them as they walked through El Groton. They'd decided not to worry about the ghost in their backyard until tomorrow. The spirit seemed angry, but not destructive enough to cause any serious damage.

"You need a break," Dean had said simply.

"I'm fine," Sam had grumbled.

"We'll do it tomorrow." And that had been the end of that conversation.

Frankly, Sam was glad for his brother's persistence. He truly didn't feel up to anything paranormal. Or normal, for that matter, and had only agreed to leave the motel at all because he'd been going a little stir-crazy with nothing but four walls and a worried big brother to occupy his time.

"You're quiet," Dean spoke into the crisp fall night.

Sam shrugged.

"You wanna talk about it?" He volunteered, and the younger man felt that brief bout of hope flare up again.

"Already did." He reminded.

"True," Dean gave, paused, then, "Wanna talk about it?"

"Nah," Sam shook his head, but let half a smile out as something up the street caught his eye. "I wanna watch The Exorcist and Amityville Horror."

The elder man raised his eyebrows in a patented look of confusion. "Huh?"

The taller man smirked, pointed at the Cineplex down the road, and watched as Dean's head turned, his face lighting up in a grin, before turning back to his brother.

"Oh, hell yeah."

_---------------_

"I just don't get how you thought _The Exorcist _scary," Dean sounded at a loss as they sat across from each other at Randy's diner.

"When I was six," Sam reminded with an eye roll, "And I only have you to blame for that."

"Hey, I considered it educational," his brother smirked.

"I bet," Sam grumbled, and was about to gesture to Heather to come take their orders, because after eating naught but popcorn all day, he was friggin' starving. But he stopped himself halfway through his thought and did a double take.

Heather? How had he known-

The jingling bell over the diner's door and the waft of pungent B.O. that accompanied it, cut off whatever he was about to contemplate.

The events that unfolded next were horrifying, but for some reason, Sam just couldn't find them all that shocking.

He wasn't surprised when the greasy-haired man pulled out the gun and started demanding cash.

He wasn't shocked as he watched Dean stand and start fighting the madman, when it became obvious that that's what he was and that he intended fully to act the part.

It was almost like he had the knowledge of these events in his subconscious, had seen them happen before they had. Of course, if Sam were thinking clearly or rationally, he would have convinced himself that that wasn't possible.

As it was though, he wasn't really thinking at all. He was just watching.

He watched as his brother made a grab for the gun and a stray bullet fired, hitting a young woman at another table. He watched that young woman go down, already covered in blood- and he watched as Lyn took care of her in her last dying moments.

He turned and watched the gunman bang his brother's hand against the wall over and over again, until Dean was screaming and Sam knew the appendage was as broken as his own.

He watched himself step in and go for the man, watched as his head cracked against the side of a table when he went down hard, after a long period of fighting- his brother helping at random intervals- both getting hurt and causing hurt in the process.

It was a montage of sorts, with muffled sounds and hushed voices.

He watched the man raise his gun, pointing it squarely at him in a shot that was destined to hit it's target, and then he saw Dean tackle him just in time, using his last remaining bout of strength to do so. He watched as his brother saved his life.

Then he watched as the gunman pulled the trigger again.

Watched Dean fall. Watched the man run out the door and into the night.

Sam saw himself pull his brother's head onto his lap, heard his own voice screaming at Heather to call for help, listened to the last words his brother would ever say; "...'ight, Sammy."

He sat on the bloody diner floor, and he watched his brother die.

Again.

TBC...


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

_---------------_

_"Memory is the thing you forget with." -Alexander Chase_

_---------------_

"Dude," Dean reentered their motel room, kicking the door shut loudly behind him, speaking with a mouthful of Egg McMuffin, "Time to wake up."

He tossed the McDonald's take-out bag on his bed and shrugged off his light - only worn for fashion since it was seventy degrees outside- jacket and sat down on the mattress.

"What time is it?" Sam asked groggily, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

"Ten," Dean grinned, and began rummaging through the grease-soaked bag. He pulled out a brightly wrapped sandwich and tossed it to the younger man. "I'm lovin' it."

Sam caught the food in one hand, and gratefully tore back the thin paper and took a bite, savoring the familiar taste that he hadn't indulged in for way too long. Mouth full, he gestured to his brother, and Dean wordlessly passed him a large coffee, enjoying his own food.

"What's with this?" Sam spoke when half his Egg McMuffin, most of his coffee and two hash browns were gone.

"Food." The elder man grunted.

"No crap," Sam bit, "What'd you do, get up at dawn?"

"Try an hour ago." Dean snorted.

"Any reason?" He tried to say it like he didn't actually care, but really, it didn't come out like that at all.

"You snore," was the irritated response, and Sam knew they were done talking about it.

_---------------_

"_Life is just one damned thing after another." Elbert Hubbard_

_---------------_

"So, dig the grave tonight? We could wait, but I don't think I can put up with that racket another night." Sam sat with the laptop on his mattress, hair still damp from the shower, stomach full of artery-clogging food, all together happy with the progression of their day thus far- minus the lack of sleep that was making his eyelids slightly heavier than normal.

The eldest hunter, who was sitting on the side of his mattress - as this room lacked a table or chairs of any sort - was staring intently at the carpeted floor and didn't respond to any of Sam's insights on their malevolent spirit. The younger man could already tell that his brother didn't share his content feelings. "Dean?"

"Dude, that's such a boring story." In reference to their new, undead friend out back.

"Hey," Sam shrugged, "I don't write the stuff."

"He's not even really bothering anybody."

"'Cept us."

"We should stick around and make a fun house out of it," Dean's smirk was lackluster at best.

"Everyone in town already has to know about him," Sam reminded halfheartedly. "He's so friggin' loud."

"So?" Dean shrugged. "Maybe they don't. Maybe they're brain dead morons. And who cares? Even if they do - let's go global."

Sam studied his brother for a long moment. "What's up, dude?"

"Nothin'," Dean shrugged, fidgeting with the pen he'd been holding over dad's journal, which was open next to him.

"Dean," Sam pressed.

"I'm bored," his brother shrugged.

"Well, maybe after we waste this guy, we can go find a werewolf or something." Sam suggested, he had a feeling that boredom was the least of the elder man's current concerns.

"Maybe," Dean's voice was laced with scarcely disguised depression.

"Hey," Sam kicked his foot lightly, "What's up?"

"I don't know," Dean sighed, dropping his head into his hands and rubbing his face the way he always did when he was overly stressed. "It's just..." he trailed off, as if he forgot to continue.

"Dean," Sam prodded.

"I need a beer," he moved his hands to his hair before finally lifting his head again.

"It's eleven in the morning." Sam pointed out lightly.

"It's noon somewhere."

"What's going on, Dean?" Sam's voice was still light, but inside his stomach was clenching.

"I don't know, Sammy." Only when his brother met his eyes, it was obvious that he did know. "I just feel... I mean, we're going in circles, man."

Sam's eyes narrowed, "What?"

"This. The hunting," he gestured around them, "It's not getting us anywhere."

"Dean-"

"No, Sam," suddenly his brother was angry, like he'd been holding this in for too long, and finally it was time for the inevitable explosion. "We're going nowhere. We're no closer to finding The Demon than we were a year ago. Hell, than dad was twenty years ago. We've been doing this for too long."

Sam just stared, eyes thoughtful.

"And what do we have to show for it?" He continued. "Mom's still gone. This Demon's still killing people. You lost Jessica. We face life and death situations every damn week, and _nothing changes_. Ever. Dad fucking _died _to save me, and for what, Sam? What are we doing?"

The question wasn't rhetorical, he could tell by his brother's wide eyes and desperate expression, so he channeled all the things that Dean had ever told him about their life. When their positions in this argument were of their typical nature and reversed.

"We're hunting the thing that tore our family apart." Sam reminded.

"No we're not," the older man argued dejectedly, "We're running in fucking circles."

"What are you saying, Dean?" Sam asked seriously, because he'd never heard his brother speak words like this before. Dean was never the one to pick apart the family business, question what they'd worked so long doing.

It took his big brother a long time to answer, but when he finally did, his voice was real, his words true; and they shook Sam to the core.

"I want to waste that thing," he said first, making eye contact and sounding sure. "I do."

"I know." Sam nodded, and he did.

"But after we do," he stopped and Sam ducked his head, trying to catch green eyes.

"After we do..." Neither left an ounce of doubt in whether or not this demon _would _be killed by them. "What?"

"I don't think I can do this anymore." He finally looked up, eyes shining, voice shaky but true. "I don't think I can hunt anymore."

_---------------_

"_There is a destiny that makes us brothers: None goes his way alone: All that we send into the lives of others comes back onto our own." Edwin Markham_

_---------------_

They hadn't talked about Dean confession since this morning, and Sam was starting to fear that it would get lost in the background of their lives, like so many important things before it. Because this _was _important - this was their life.

He didn't want to push too hard, but he knew the window of opportunity to bring this back up for discussion was quickly closing, and he needed this to not be forgotten.

They were currently on their way to go get lunch - a quaint little diner their destination. They'd considered going to one of the town's real restaurants- a Bob Evan's- but neither had truly felt up for it; plus, there was something comforting about the familiarity of the greasy-spoon diner stereotype that had always existed in their lives.

They were just outside Randy's Diner when Sam finally spoke.

"Are we gonna talk about it?" He didn't mean to say it then, but the silence was getting to be too much.

"Later." Dean mumbled, and Sam dared to be hopeful. It wasn't an outright no, it wasn't a joke that brushed it off as nothing, and it wasn't anger. Perhaps all his brother needed was some time to dissect his own thoughts before spilling his guts again.

Yeah, Sam decided as they entered the diner. He just needed time.

He probably would have gotten that time too, had that little bell attached to the door his brother pushed open a moment later not rattled loose a million hidden things.

Because as soon as Sam heard that jingle, his mind flashed.

Broken images - that same little jingling in a different time. A greasy haired man, clad in all black, entering through this very door late at night.

"Sammy?" Dean's voice brought him back for a moment, and he realized that his palm had locked itself to his forehead and his mouth was open like he'd just made a distressed sound.

"Ah..." he tried to answer, if only to alleviate some of the unhidden worry in his brother's tone, but his gaze happened to float over to the skinny blonde waitress behind the counter.

Heather.

His mind flashed again- the images still tilting and tinged red, ensuring him that the worst was still to come- Heather was sobbing, collapsed against the back wall behind the counter, hugging herself and crying loudly.

A gunshot rang out.

"Sammy!" He barely felt his brother's hand on his shoulder, heard his knees hit the hard floor of the diner more than he experienced the pain.

Then he was gone.

He was inside his mind, watching himself, in Randy's Diner, holding his brother's head in his lap. There was so much blood, all around them, over them.

"_You're hurt," _Dean whispered to him. _"Blood,"_

"_Not on my hands, not on yours," _

Two women sat in the background, Heather wouldn't stop crying - and if you really listened, there were sirens somewhere off in the distance.

But all Sam heard was his brother dying.

He thought it was over then. The tiny sliver of his consciousness that stayed on and coherent during his visions told him logically, that had to be all there was to see.

Then his mind flashed again, and that tiny sliver got pushed farther and farther away. Soon it would be gone altogether.

He kept seeing. It was almost the exact same scene.

Randy's Diner. Pitch black outside plate glass windows. That man with his gun.

Only this time, when the shot fired, Sam was on the receiving end.

Wrapped up in his brother's arms as the madman bled -after a second shot fired- Dean choked out heartbreaking words_. "You're losing a lot of blood, but it's okay, 'cause an ambulance is coming, and I'm your blood type, remember? How convenient dad always thought that was? So it'll be okay."_

"'_m, sorry," _He heard himself speak dying mumbles.

"_I love you, you fucking bitch. Is that what you wanted to hear?" _

He saw himself die in his brother's arms, and the last thing he remembered consciously thinking was; is it over yet?

It wasn't. The images came harder, quicker, less logically.

"_This'll be a friggin' cakewalk."_

Lyn staring at him with wide, suspicious eyes. _"You're not supposed to be here." _

"_You never know, stranger things have happened." _Dean's smirk.

"_Bad dream?" _

The blood was spreading and Sam was frozen. Stuck watching.

"_Something weird's going on."_

"_I can't believe I was scared of that when I first saw it." _His own chuckle.

"_I thought it was important that you get a solid idea of what it was we did for a living. You know, I considered it an educational video."_

"_I had a dream. And it felt so _real_," _

"_I just don't get how you found The Exorcist scary," _Dean's chuckle.

"_I don't know what's real anymore," _

"_When I was six, and I only have you to blame for that."_

"_You're not supposed to be here." _Lyn's eyes- wide and hopeful.

"_Most people don't vacation in New Mexico, Sammy," _Spoken over the Impala in a peaceful, almost surreal, setting.

"'_m'old." _More blood.

"_Sure. You think they have good burgers here?"_

"_No."_

A large bookstore- floor to ceiling shelves, a hidden back room. Hard covered books piled high.

"_You shoulda just bought the damn thing if you wanted it,"_

"_That just screams X-files," _

"_Don't you usually remember your dreams? I mean, normal or supernatural, you usually remember them, right?" _

"_You never know, stranger things have happened." _

"_You're not supposed to be here." _Deep, dark brown eyes.

"_Was it, though? Demon weird?"_

"_You don't know what you're getting into."_

"_You think she was talking about Casper?"_

"_If you say that again, I'm gonna kill you." _

"_Those guys bothering you?" _Heather again.

"_You're not supposed to be here." _

"_So _you _can do research while _I _go dig up a body_."

"_You're not supposed to be here." _

"_I'll bet ya anything we'll be all done and at a bar by midnight."_

"_Something weird's going on."_

"_Forgive me for not trusting something that someone on the side of the road cooks," _

"_You're not supposed to be here." _

Finally, the world tunneled a familiar black, and that's all his mind showed him.

TBC...


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

---------------

_"Memory itself is an internal rumor." -__The Life of Reason__ by George Santayana _

---------------

Sam woke up slowly, his first conscious thought was appropriately about how agonizingly repetitive that very notion was becoming.

His brother's voice filtered through his mind before he had a chance to grab onto reality- whatever that happened to be this time - anymore than that.

"Sam," he heard the growl that indicated Dean was either angry, or extremely concerned.

The younger man cracked an eye and was immediately assaulted by obnoxiously bright light. He shut it again at once, but was able to retain some useful information from the quick glance he'd managed of his surroundings.

White walls, boxy machines, Dean in a chair next to the uncomfortable bed he was lying on.

Hospital, then.

Sarcasm infused his thoughts; _Great_.

He heard his brother shuffle around and the scrape of his plastic chair against the linoleum of the floor made him cringe.

"Sammy?"

"Yeah," the younger man grunted. His throat felt scratchy.

"How you feelin'?" He asked after a brief pause, and Sam almost wanted to smirk.

"Like a bomb went off in my head." He managed.

There were some more shuffling sounds and Sam felt something thin being pressed against his lips. He drank the water quickly and gratefully, and a minute or two after Dean took the paper cup away, he felt alright enough to open his eyes again and sit up.

"What happened?"

Sam went to sit up all the way, but his brother's firm hand on his shoulder stopped him, and the almost parental look in his eyes made the younger brother recede and settle for half-propping himself against his pillows.

"You passed out," Dean responded, pulling his chair closer to the bed and sitting again.

Then it came back to him. "Shit," he mumbled.

"What did you see?" His brother's tone was careful, but there was unhidden fear there. Which was completely justified, because Sam's visions were pretty scary - for both of them - when they were of the _normal _variety, which this one definitely hadn't been.

"Us," Sam remembered. "Over and over again. The same thing, just... Different."

"Huh?"

"I don't know," Sam shook his head an immediately regretted doing so. "Man," he cringed. "Did I pass out at that diner? Randy's Diner?"

"Yeah-"

"Dean," Sam's eyes locked with his brother's and he was suddenly fiercely serious. "I think one of us is going to die."

---------------

"_Life is like a box of chocolates, a cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift no one ever asks for. Unreturnable because all you get back is another box of chocolates. So you're stuck with this mostly indefinable whipped mint crap, mindlessly wolfed down when there's nothing else to eat during the game. Sure, once in a while you get a peanut butter cup or an English toffee, but it's gone too soon and the taste is fleeting. In the end you're left with nothing but broken bits of hardened jelly and teeth-shattering nuts, which if you are desperate enough to eat, leaves nothing but useless brown paper wrappers." -Cigarette smoking man, The X-Files_

---------------

"Shit, Sammy, none of that makes sense."

"No crap," Sam snapped, rubbing his head.

They'd been at this for hours. Doctors had come and gone, words like 'Observation', 'Unexplained', 'Precautionary tests' and 'Bull-headed' had been batted about. Although Sam doubted very much that that last one was actually supposed to make it to their ears.

"You should stick around," Dean had told him - attempting and failing to sound unconcerned - after the third doctor had left the room. "Just in case."

They'd fought about it and Dean had won; mostly because Sam was just too tired to truly push it.

"I mean," and they were back the present. "Let's get away from what you actually saw - since when do you have multiple scenario visions?"

"Since now I guess." He massaged his temples gingerly.

Dean sighed and studied Sam carefully. "Look, dude, I'm gonna go back to the motel, check dad's journal, search the web, maybe even peruse a couple of those geek books you keep in the trunk."

Suddenly beyond exhausted, Sam shut his eyes for long seconds and nodded slowly. "Yeah, alright."

"I'll be back tomorrow."

He nodded again, already half asleep. He felt a gentle pressure on his shoulder a rough whisper of a reassurance, "We'll figure this out."

Then his brother was walking away, flicking off the light, causing darkness to fall. Right before Dean exited the room he paused at the doorway, and deeply spoken words floated over to the hospital bed.

"...'ight, Sammy."

Then the door clicked shut behind him and Dean never noticed Sam's eyes snap open and stare widely at the ceiling.

---------------

"_...'ight, Sammy."_

It echoed all around him, mocking him.

As far as he could recall those words hadn't been in his vision; but he knew, beyond a shadow of any logical or illogical doubt, that those were Dean's last dying words.

Could see his brother gurgling them, clear as day, as he lie dying on the diner floor. More frightening than that - which was saying something, because, _come on -_ was the simple fact that Sam didn't know where the image had come from.

Didn't know if it was part of his vision or...

He didn't let himself finish the thought, because nothing else made sense.

None of it made sense, really, and for all he knew, the fucking world was about to explode.

He yawned loudly then, cringing at the sharp pang of pain - say that five times fast - in his head.

Fuck it, he thought, he was tired, even his thoughts had stopped making sense, and hell, if the world did explode, at least his headache would be gone. And assuming that it didn't - which was a pretty hefty thing to assume considering what had happened already today - he and Dean would figure it out tomorrow.

With that decided, he settled back onto the bed, getting as comfortable as he could, and was so close to sleep. So blissfully close to escape...

Then there was a knock on the door, the exhausted man said nothing and a few moments later it was pushed open with a delicate, cautious ease - not that of a doctor, nurse or any other possible hospital staff.

Sam lifted his head, cracked an eye, and quite suddenly wished he was hooked up to morphine.

TBC...


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: I make quite a few references in this chapter. To several TV shows and a movie. If you read the summary and have been following along with the plot, you should pretty much be able to guess what I'm talking about. And if I didn't mention it before, I don't own any of it. They just fit it in so nice and neat with this plot that I stole them.

Hope no one minds.

Chapter Ten

---------------

"_Open yourself up to 'extreme possibilities' only when they're the truth." -Mulder_

---------------

"You've got to be kidding me." The youngest Winchester mumbled to himself.

A relatively young woman stood in the doorway of his hospital room. He knew, without knowing why he knew, that her name was Lyn. The first emotion that came to him when he saw her was something akin to extreme irritation, only he couldn't figure out _why_ -because as far as he could logically recall, he had never met her before.

He shouldn't even know her name.

Then again, logic was a crapshoot.

"You know me." She seemed just as surprised, as taken aback by the notion, as he did.

The only difference was that she sounded distantly excited. Sam was just weary, if not a little disconnected.

"Yeah." He paused. "I think so."

"How?" She inquired, stepping farther into the room, just enough to shut the door behind her.

Which made sense, 'cause they wouldn't want any _sane _person to accidentally overhear this little exchange.

"You tell me." He prompted; because he was tired, his head hurt, and, if he thought about it, he probably _was _hooked up to some sort of pain-reducing, emotion-settling drug. It would explain why he wasn't more freaked out, anyway.

Western medicine is your friend.

She didn't exactly honor his request right away. She said simply, "You've never met me before, right?"

Seemingly forgetting his reluctance to talk, he answered honestly and without much hesitation, "I don't think so. I saw you in the diner right before-" he cut himself off abruptly.

"Before?"

"Before I passed out."

"That's not exactly what happened." She said slowly, but Sam's lips were pressed tightly together.

"Why are you here?" He snapped, head pain, irritation and just the barest strands of something he absolutely refused to name _fear _making him edgy and impatient.

She took a few steps closer to him and Sam could finally see her eyes, which had been hidden in the shadows of the room thus far. They were dark brown and filled with emotion.

They were also familiar to him. So, very familiar.

"Because I think you can help me." She took a deep breath and seemingly sealed herself for the worst. "What do you know about spells?"

Sam had a thousand and one useless, sarcastic, comments on the tip of his tongue as soon as he processed the question. Simply because he was Dean's little brother.

He sometimes forgot how hard it was for other people to notice the intricate similarities between the two of them, because Sam so often chose to keep his mouth shut in situations where Dean simply wouldn't.

Take right now, for instance. If his brother were hearing this, he knew Lyn would already be privy to a good half dozen or so of those sarcasms. Only Dean wasn't here with him. Sam realized with a pang that he wished he were.

As it was, all the younger brother could manage to do was take a deep breath and ask, only a little patronizingly, "Like, witchcraft spells?"

Lyn must have been encouraged by the tone of his voice or the words spoken, because she nodded eagerly and took a seat in the chair that had, for the last several hours, been home to his brother.

"What makes you think I even know what you're talking about?" He couldn't help question, taken aback by her readiness to have an in-depth chat about this.

"Because the first words out of your mouth weren't; 'I have no idea what you're talking about'." She pointed out baldly, and Sam felt heat rise to his face.

Oh, yeah. Good point.

"And because when you walked into Randy's today, I saw you look at me." She was looking at him now as if he might possess all the complex answers to life's greatest riddles. It was a bit daunting. "You looked at me like you knew me. And I have to know why."

For whatever reason; be it his vision, his greater sense of duty to all things supernatural, his pounding head, or the clawing voice in the back of his mind- that sounded so much like Dean- that was telling him he'd been hunting for too long not to trust his feelings on something like this.

Because he was feeling like he should trust this woman. That there was something much bigger going on here.

Whatever the reason, he made a decision in that moment to have this conversation. To talk to this woman like she was something more than a babbling loony. And hey, if he was wrong, if she _was _a psycho, he could always blame the meds.

"You told us," he searched the recesses of his memory, having talked to Dean about it all afternoon, and well into late evening, helped him dredge it up fairly quickly. "You told us that we didn't know what we were getting into. That we weren't supposed to be here."

"I told you that?" He voice was so indefinable that Sam didn't even try to gauge her emotions.

He did, however, remember with a start that he was talking about a _vision. _"You're going to tell us that." Then he realized that that didn't sound too much better. "I mean-"

Lucky for him, she interrupted, looking so dazed that Sam wondered of she'd heard anything past his first admission. "You remember."

"I-"

"Oh God," she gasped, and to his surprised horror, tears were quickly filling those dark brown orbs. "You remember. You can help me. You were sent here to help me." She let out a choked sob.

Sam stared, dumbfounded.

"I prayed," she gasped. "I prayed and prayed that someone would come. And now you're here. Someone, something, _must _have sent you."

"Um..." Sam watched as she covered her face with her hands, tears leaked down her face and her sobs were scarcely muffled. For all his people skills, he'd never really been good at this. "Actually, Dean just threw a dart at a map."

Lyn looked up in confusion, and Sam shrugged. Hey, it was the truth.

"I swear," he went on, if not a little stupidly, "I don't have any religious affiliations, no higher power sent me. I'm defiantly not working for the big guy." Which was kind of what she's just implied. He thought. Maybe.

"You don't understand." She stated slowly.

"That seems to be the theme for the day." He told her sardonically. "Can you fill in some of the blanks?"

Lyn seemed to be more calm, more at ease with...whatever it was she was dealing with internally. Her breakdown had subdued itself and only red eyes and an occasional sniffle gave away that it had occurred at all.

"I don't know where to start." She sounded overwhelmed as she pulled at the sleeves of her faded leather jacket. Sam got the fleeting image of a slightly younger woman burying her head there, trying to escape from something that was happening in reality. But he let that image go as quickly as it had come; not wanting to dive into whatever was waiting behind it.

"You said something about a spell," he encouraged. "Witchcraft?"

"Yes," she sighed heavily, moving her hands from her lap to the railing that was pulled up on the side of Sam's bed. She gripped it until her knuckles went white. "A spell. I did a spell."

Witchcraft gone awry. Hell, how many times had they gone through this before? It felt almost comfortingly familiar. A little fickle too, but he ignored that, because after today, how good could his senses possibly be?

"You did a spell," he repeated. "And something went wrong?"

The only question now was, how did the demon fit in? He only had visions if the yellow-eyed bastard was involved.

"We're in a time-loop." She spoke the words so factually, without hesitation, like she thought that he had already known what she was going to say; and Sam simply stopped.

His whole mind just _stopped. _

He was having an out-of-body experience. He had to be.

Lyn started talking again, her mouth moving, lips contorting to make work-like shapes, and vague, monotone sounds came out.

But Sam existed on his own, separate from reality, in a stop-time, a time-out, he mentally disengaged from the real world. It took him a while to catch up - of course, the time probably felt longer in his head than it did to Lyn.

"Wait, wait, what?" Sam heard his own breathless words after a slight delay. Like a translated Kurosawa movie, where the English was just said over the initial dialogue and the words never quite matched up with the sequence of events.

"Huh?" She sounded puzzled and Sam took a moment to gather his bearings.

"A time-loop?" He repeated, wondering absently if he waved his hand in front of his face how many fingers he would have.

"Yeah." She sounded hesitant again. "I just... I kinda thought you knew."

"You said a spell." Words were matching up again, he cold focus. Which wasn't such a good thing.

"A spell that created a time-loop." She said, sounding again like this was repeated knowledge.

"That's not possible." Sam argued.

He thought about that episode of the X-Files where Mulder got caught in the continuing bank explosion.

He thought about Bill Murray in Groundhog day.

He thought about the three Super Geeks in Buffy The Vampire Slayer copying that movie and that episode of the X-Files and doing the same thing to Sarah Michelle Geller.

He thought about the Season One finale of Charmed.

Then he recalled a conversation that he and his brother had had today about Lyn looking like Holly Marie Combs, who played a witch on the popular TV show his brother liked so much - only because of the hot chicks, of course.

Then he went over the events of the day and realized that that conversation couldn't have happened.

There was no time for the conversation to have happened. Especially since neither him nor his brother had _met _the woman he was currently talking to.

Yet Sam remembered it happening. Remembered it like he remembered his big brother taping their map to a motel wall at the end of their last hunt, not twenty-four hours ago, and throwing a dart at it to see where they would go next.

He remembered himself, after blindfolding Dean, moving the map, placing it at an obscure angle, because he knew his brother would always hit the bulls eye, and that they'd end up in Colorado or some other central state if he hadn't.

Only he didn't remember that as if it had happened less than a day ago. He remembered it like it happened a long, long time ago. He remembered it like it had been the start of something huge and life altering. The start...

He pulled himself back to the present, to his hospital room and Lyn. "A time-loop?"

She nodded wearily, not as excited as she had been; a subdued calm replacing her eagerness. "Maybe I should start at the beginning."

"Maybe you should." Sam agreed, deciding not to analyze anything until he had at least the majority of the facts. Or whatever she was about to lay out for him to pick apart.

They both indulged in a deep, calming breath. Sam settled back against his flat pillow, Lyn leaned forward slightly in the chair. Looking deeply into Sam's eyes, she began.

"It all started just over a month ago."

TBC...

A/N: I had actually planned on making this all one chapter, but as soon as I got it down, I realized that it'd be way, way too long. Sorry about the cliffhanger.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

---------------

_**"**Truth is as subjective as reality." -Jose Chung, The X-Files_

---------------

"A month ago." She repeated, trying to calm down. "A month ago me and my little sister, Kim, were in Randy's. We grew up in this town, we've been going there all our lives. Nothing bad ever happened before."

You could never hear a supernatural story without at least a little angst, Sam thought sadly, especially if the supernatural occurrence was brought about by the most powerful human emotion there was; grief.

By the way Lyn's eyes were already welling up and focusing on something far away, Sam could tell that that's what this was.

"But something did happen?" Sam was forced to prompt when she didn't go on. He was sympathetic to human suffering, he really was. In fact, he couldn't think of anyone - except perhaps Dean - who was in a better position to be _more _sympathetic. What with all their personal loss and day to day dealings with heartache.

But right now the youngest Winchester felt like he was going a little bit insane - a hard feeling for him to come by since last year when he'd watch his girlfriend die the exact same way his mother had, days _before _it had actually happened - and he really needed that feeling to go away. Only a logical explanation could do that for him.

"Do you remember the man?" She asked weakly, obviously not wanting to explain anything more than she had to.

She wouldn't have to. Because Sam did remember. Whether he was recalling images from his vision or...something else; different memories, wasn't exactly clear to him. But he did remember the man. The madman with the gun who had shot...

"Yeah," Sam swallowed. "I remember."

Lyn nodded. "He came to our diner one night a month ago. It was the first day she'd been back here in a while. She'd been over seas in South America. Peace Corp."

"Nice." Sam couldn't help but honestly admire this girl he'd never met. It took a lot of guts and a true desire to help, to join an organization like that. He'd always put people like that on the side of the good guys.

"I know," And there was so much pride there. "She signed up the day she turned eighteen, she wanted to get away from here, I knew that. But hell, she found a damn good way to do it. She trained for three months in California, but they didn't call her until she was twenty. She served for two years. I hadn't seen her for two years the day I picked her up. The day after that - today - was the first full day we got together in two years. She was still on a messed up time schedule, you know? So we ended up eating late." There was that pause that Sam recognized so well. The one that was full of doom and all the things they fought so hard to protect people against.

The atmosphere of the hospital room shifted as he tried to smile sympathetically. It came out as a grimace, and it didn't really matter, because Sam doubted Lyn could seem him at all through her tears.

"What happened?" Sam whispered softly.

"That guy came in a shot her." Lyn got it out in one gasp, breathing hard and fighting back sobs once it was out. "There hadn't been an unnatural death in El Groton since Jim Paulman killed himself. And that was almost-"

"A hundred years ago." Sam interrupted, and something important occurred to him. He ignored it though, as Lyn started talking again. Now obviously wasn't the right time for that.

"Yeah." She sighed sadly, if she thought it was at all odd or suspicious that Sam knew that tidbit of information, she didn't comment on it. "And that guy just walked into town with that gun. Just to get money. I mean, what did he think, that small town diners don't use banks? That they'd just have a year's worth of profits piled up in the stockroom?"

Sam shook his head, indicting that he neither could decipher the thought process of the lunatic that had truly began all this insanity.

"Maybe he thought a town like this wouldn't have a good police force."

_They usually don't. _Sam noted to himself, but refrained from saying so out loud. The filter he had - and Dean lacked - that told him what was appropriate and what wasn't, kicking in and informing him that now wasn't the best time to bring that up.

"Either way..." her anger receded as pain flooded her voice once again. "...he killed Kimmy that night. He killed her. I watched her die. Do you have any idea what it's like to watch your sister die?"

"No," Sam whispered. Although, if it was anything like the mental movie he'd gotten of his brother dying, in his arms, time and time again, he'd much rather never find out.

"I couldn't just...let him get away with that. I couldn't let her die. I couldn't let her stay dead."

Ah-oh.

"What did you do?" Sam asked wearily, recalling that they'd dealt with something very similar to this not so long ago.

"I went to Calvin's Corner, the bookstore in town." She stopped and looked at his thoughtfully. "Did you ever go there?"

Sam recalled a large shop with floor to ceiling shelves, a misleading front display and a hidden back room. He closed his eyes and saw ancient texts - translations that he'd told Dean he'd needed, a book on demons that Dean had found. A law book that had prompted a fight...maybe. And a store owner that Dean believed had a homosexual crush on him.

"I remember it now."

"What?" Lyn questioned. Sam figured, to her, it was probably a pretty ambiguous answer for a question that was straight forward. But hell, she started it. All this ambiguous crap.

"I remember it now." He repeated. "The more you tell me, the more I remember."

"I thought you already did?" She seemed confused, and eager to get away from the subject of her little sister for the moment. Sam couldn't blame her for wanting an emotional brake form that.

He was also rather glad to provide it. "I remember bits a pieces." He told her. Which sounded way less weird than, 'I had a vision of bits and pieces of this messed up past that isn't really a past.'

Lyn was dealing with a lot right now - as was Sam - the last thing either of them needed to do was hear the long, drawn out explanation of his psychic abilities.

"The more you say, the more real it seems. The less I feel like..."

"Like you're going nuts?" Lyn provided, and chuckled humorlessly when Sam gave her an agreeing look. "I felt like that too. When all this started. Hell, sometimes I still do feel like that. For a while there, I was beginning to think this was all some sort of bizarre, messed up hallucination. That I'd hit my head or something, and all this wasn't really happening, I was actually locked up in a mental institution somewhere."

"Then I showed up?" Sam guessed.

"Yeah." She nodded. "You and..." she looked at him oddly then, tilting her head.

"My brother." He answered unvoiced question. "Me and him... We actually kinda deal with this stuff a lot."

"What kind of stuff?" Lyn's brow crinkled suspiciously. Sam knew that look.

"Supernatural stuff." He said easily; way, way past the point of worrying about sounding like a lunatic or scaring her away or keeping hidden their family secret. "Sometimes witchcraft stuff. This isn't the first spell I've seen done meant to bring back the dead."

"Only that's not what it _did_," She flung up her hands helplessly. "I went to the bookstore and found a spell that would bring my sister back to life. It was written in Latin. I translated the damn thing myself. I did everything it said to do, and when I woke up the next morning, Kimmy was alive. At first I'd thought it'd worked. She didn't have any memory of what had happened and I was so grateful, that I didn't even notice at first...that neither did anyone else."

Sam listened carefully, face scrunched up in concentration.

"I mean, we were walking around town, and people were just acting like nothing had happened. Talking to Kim like she hadn't died the night before, and I didn't know what to do. Then I thought, well hey, this is great. I mean, I hadn't even thought about how I would explain it to everyone - to Kim herself - what I had done. If she would even remember. The book didn't say anything about what would happen after the spell was done, how it would affect the people directly involved or the person coming back.

After not too long, I just convinced myself that this was perfect. The perfect solution to something that was never supposed to happen. I was so happy." Lyn shook her head sadly. "We went to Randy's again that night. Because Kim wanted to, and I couldn't think of a legitimate excuse not to."

Sam could pretty much guess what had happened next. He was good at putting together puzzle pieces. He really didn't like the picture this was making.

"Then it happened again. I watched my sister die. _Again._" She placed a hand on her forehead for a moment angrily, tears and rage building up an almost palpable layer around her. "Then I woke up, and it was the same day. Then I woke up again, and again and ... It hasn't changed. I've been living this day for the last month."

"And _nothing's _changed?" Sam inquired gently.

"Oh, no." Lyn snorted sarcastically. "Things change. Sometimes I keep Kimmy away from the diner and she doesn't die. Sometimes we're _there _and she doesn't die. I killed that bastard a couple times, watched him get away most of the other. Heather got caught in the crossfire two or three times. Once _I _died." She took a deep breath and looked at Sam like she had at the beginning of this tale. "But every single day I wake up, and live again the same twenty-four hours. And no one's been able to leave town, and no one new has come through. Until you and your brother. Four days ago."

"Four days?" Sam exclaimed, completely bypassing her hopeful, hinting voice. He had memories. Odd memories that didn't exactly add up, but... "Four days?"

"Yeah." She nodded. "Twice your brother died. Once you did. And one time you guys just didn't show up at all. I think that mighta been right before I found you there one afternoon and yelled at you about not belonging here."

Sam raised her eyebrows at her.

She shrugged. "Hey, you freaked me out a little at first."

"_We _freaked _you_ out?" Sam shook his head, not sure what exactly to think of all this yet. He settled, of course, on an old fallback; gather more information. "Hey, you don't happen to have a copy of that spell on you, do you?"

Before the words were even all the way out of his mouth, Lyn was shuffling through the scruffy messenger bag that had been hanging at her side when she'd come in and had been sitting at her feet since then.

She had it pulled out in no time. "I brought it when I decided to come tonight. I didn't know if you'd actually be able to help me, but I hoped..."

Sam nodded understandingly and took the crumpled, yellowed page, that had obviously been torn from a textbook, out of her hands and carefully unfolded it.

He skimmed it through. It was a whole page in tiny printed Latin, a few diagrams threw in for good measure. He thought at first that it looked pretty straight forward, and he couldn't think of why it hadn't worked like it was intended to work.

Which of course meant that he'd missed something.

So he read it again. That's when he realized that he couldn't actually read it. _Any _of it.

Shit.

"This isn't in Latin." He said slowly.

"But-"

"It's _ancient _Latin." He explained, still looking down at the paper and feeling oddly like he'd had this conversation before. "It's similar, but... If you translate an ancient form of a language with the regular translations, it'll seem like you're doing it right if you're not familiar with the language. My brother did that once. Almost killed both of us." One look in her wide, frightful eyes assured Sam that Lyn had defiantly taken Spanish in high school. "You have to have the right books to translate it."

"I didn't." She was shaking her head, so panicked she looked about ready to have a nervous breakdown. "I didn't know. I just...used what was there. And the internet. I pieced it together a little at a time."

"Here's a tip." Sam said wearily, lowering the paper and studying this desperate woman. "Googling spells to bring back the dead? Not such a good idea."

She let her head sink into her hands and snorted humorlessly at Sam's words. "I wasn't really thinking clearly."

"I understand that." Sam said sympathetically.

"So..." she looked up timidly when he said nothing more, her expression was doubtful; like she couldn't believe he wasn't yelling at her.

Part of Sam did want to yell. To scream and get angry and accuse this woman of being a friggin' moron and not thinking of the long-tern affects of her decision. He wanted to tell her that what's dead should stay dead - that that's the natural course the world took.

But his head still hurt, his back was getting stiff, he had a feeling that whatever pain meds he might be on were beginning to wear off, and... And they were talking about a goddamn _time-loop _for crap's sake. Yelling about bad decisions seemed completely irrelevant.

Plus, he'd never quite gotten himself to fully believe in that _what's dead should stay dead _rule. In some instances - Lyn's sister - yeah, dead pretty much should have stayed dead; then again, the same thing could be said for his brother. An outside influence had acted to keep him alive, and the affects had been devastating.

Much like this.

"Sam?" Lyn's inquiring tone broke through his thoughts.

"Yeah?" He grunted, making an honest effort to let go of his own grief.

"I asked if you could help me." She repeated the words that had been lost on the youngest Winchester. "Can you help me fix this?"

Sam shook his head and groaned internally. "Maybe," he admitted. "I have to tell my brother all this. Make him believe what's going on."

Lyn nodded, but then looked suddenly nervous, if not a little sheepish. Glancing at her wrist - her watch - she looked up and bit her lip. "Not gonna happen in the next three and a half minutes, is it?"

"Come again?"

"The day," Lyn let out a deep breath. "Rewinds every night at the exact same time. The time Kimmy died. Ya know, the first time." Sam stared. "Two-thirty-seven."

"In three minutes?" He asked. "I...I mean, what's gonna..?"

"Just like before. The day will start over wherever you started out originally."

"The motel." Sam said.

She shrugged. "Yeah, I guess."

"Will I, I mean..."

"I don't know." She said, sighing with an air of defeat.

Sam tried to think about it. The lost days that he could scarcely recall, the broken fragments that his vision had showed him. As far as he could tell, the day didn't go beyond Dean's death. Or his own.

Of course, that wouldn't explain away the day they hadn't gone to the diner. Yet his memories - or whatever these were - didn't even touch a pocket of time that might be considered...rewinding, or whatever they wanted to call it.

He thought about it some more, considered it from all angles, logical and not; and that was the last thing he could remember doing.

Thinking.

TBC...


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

---------------

"_Last night I dreamed I ate a ten-pound marshmallow, and when I woke up the pillow was gone." -Tommy Cooper_

---------------

Sam woke up in a flat motel bed, and for the briefest of seconds thought that he ought to be situated in a similarly sized hospital room.

He sat up in that bed very slowly, seeing everything through a haze. The walls, the carpet, the identical single mattress next to his, his slumbering older brother, the sunlight trickling through their window.

Just like that his memories came back.

Assaulting him and forcing him to lay back down on the bed. It didn't take him long to regain the knowledge that he had lost last night, or the knowledge of _why _he had lost it. While he didn't really want to believe it, he knew in his gut it was true and actually happening.

He had the childish urge to pull the blanket and sheet over his head and hide from the rest of the world.

He overcame that urge, though, fairly quickly. Settling instead on grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes and declaring to himself, "Crap."

---------------

"_Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists. It is real. It is possible. It is yours." -Ayn Rand_

---------------

Their lives left very little to be imagined.

There were different cases, a variety of people. Sometimes Dean got attached, sometimes Sam did. Sometimes Sam felt like a loss was his personal responsibility, sometimes Dean did.

But aside from the specifics of the job, their lives just repeated itself. It wasn't even two separate lives anymore. Sam and Dean were one. Brothers bound together by tragedy and redemption, a supernatural purpose.

In a perfect world, that's all that they would need. In a world even a little less fucked up than this one, that would be enough to keep them from drowning.

But Dean was reaching his breaking point with this very concept; because they _were _drowning. They were running in circles. In idiotic, moronic, life-threatening circles. They were dogs on a race track, mice in a wheel.

Running themselves to death with next to nothing to show for it.

Dad's death had been a swift kick in the balls while they were already down hard, and honestly, Dean didn't know if they'd ever fully recover from that.

He certainly doubted he would.

It scared him more than he'd like to admit, the complexity and interweaving quality of these feelings, these vague ideas. That fear made him want to share these thoughts with his little brother, more than he'd ever wanted to share anything emotional ever before. But he'd been thinking like this, about this, for a while now, and he just honestly didn't know if he could.

Engaging in an emotional moment for Sam's benefit was one thing, as much as Dean hated doing it, he almost always would when he knew, or even suspected, that Sam needed it. But openly talking about his own feelings, feelings that were in no way directly connected to his brother, that was something else entirely.

He thought about it, and could never remember doing that. Not really. Any emotional chats they'd ever had were about or because of Sam- or dad - and he'd been reluctant at best to participate in those. The thought of talking openly now terrified him.

He was closed off as a general rule of self-preservational instinct, and he didn't know any other way to be. No one had ever taught him and it wasn't in his soul to learn.

Dean Winchester considered all this, one morning in a small New Mexico town, waiting for his little brother to reappear from wherever he'd vanished to that morning before he had woken up.

He considered it and reevaluated it until his thoughts felt like they would rise up and crush the life out of him.

It was half-past eleven when Sam came back to the motel, sporting too large coffees and a concentrated expression. Dean knew that look well, and was torn between relief and disappointment al seeing it.

"What's up?" He inquired, taking the hot beverage out of the cardboard tray without being prompted after it was set down on the nightstand.

"Something kinda weird happened this morning." Sam said distractedly, walking around their room so as not to make eye contact with Dean, he left his coffee in it's holder and the elder brother had a sneaking suspicion it had already been emptied.

"Well, that could encompass a whole crap-load of things, dude." He pointed out. "A few of which, I don't even wanna touch. So you're gonna have to get more detailed."

"Well, I woke up and... Remembered something." The younger man seemed overly interested in the woodwork of the bathroom door.

"Like, oops I left the hot water on?" Dean's own hand played nervously with the quilt on the unmade bed where he was perched, while the other circled his coffee cup tightly. "Or a vision?"

"Something like that." He said vaguely.

Dean, being impatient as he was, got fed up rather quickly. "_Dude_." He exclaimed. "Cut the cryptic."

"We're in a time-loop." Sam blurted, meeting his eyes for the briefest of seconds before looking down again.

Dean recalled his own thoughts from this morning and figured either Sam had been harboring the same secret views and opinions of the present course of their lives, or whatever his brother was about to engulf him in would prove to be incredibly ironic.

"Come again?"

"Look, I know you're probably not gonna want to believe me," starting out with defenses-never good. "Hell, I probably wouldn't believe me. I think this is the most...fucked up thing we've ever dealt with, but I need you to listen to me. To believe me. At least give me a chance to explain it, okay?"

His tone was desperate and his eyes pleading. He looked real and sincere and Dean couldn't ignore that, or the fear that was starting to build up in his chest ever so slightly.

"Okay." He held up his hands and spoke as if he thought Sam was exaggerating, trying to keep him calm. "No problem. Explain away."

And explain he did. For the next twenty odd minutes he listened to his little brother spin his twisted tale of a miss-worked spell and a woman named Lyn, of visions clouding together as reality and bits and pieces of things that might have been but logically never could be.

Sam finished his story by explaining that he'd been at Randy's for most of the morning talking to Lyn, reaffirming his belief that this was indeed happening.

Dean gaped after his brother's mismatched theories, teetering between believing simply because, well, why the hell not? And needing more evidence - which normally would have been Sam's reaction to such a far-fetched idea.

"You know that anyone else would say that that's impossible, right?" Just to confirm that his brother hadn't gone completely loony.

If you knew that the theory you were proposing was loaded with ten tons of crazy, it was just a little easier to believe that it might indeed be the truth. A paradox of life, but hey.

"Yes." Sam bit. "I know it's nuts. I do. I mean, come on? A time-loop? I didn't believe it either. But this is happening. I can feel that this is happening."

"Okay..." He stared at nothing for a while. "Alright I get, if this is really _reality_, how Lyn can exist outside of it. But how are you?"

Sam shook his head, finally collapsing on his bed, pulling his head into his hands. "The visions? My second sight? Whatever you want to call it, it makes me different, more...perceptible."

"This is crazy." Dean stated baldly.

"That's what you thought about my visions when I first told you." Sam said it so factually, without care, that the elder man didn't even bother denying that those indeed had been his feelings.

"That was different." He did declare.

"How?"

"Because." Like it wasn't obvious. "We've got proof of those. Saved people because of them. Found their connection to the demon."

"I think this town, Lyn's spell, might be tied to the demon too." Sam spoke like he was about to start a new story, almost excitedly, and Dean felt suddenly so tired.

"You think this girl is working for the demon? Possessed by the demon?" His eyes were searching.

"No." Sam shook his head. "Not at all. I think her spell _caused _something that might affect-"

"Sam." Dean interrupted, shaking his head. "Are you hearing yourself? A time-loop?"

"I thought you believed me." He said slowly, disappointment subtly tingeing his tone.

"I..." he seriously needed a beer. "I feel like you're freakin' Bill Murray."

"Yeah," Sam let out a breath, "Saw that coming."

"Or like you're Mulder and I'm Scully. Which so isn't cool, 'cause I already decided that _you're _the red-headed woman."

"Don't forget Charmed and those three geeks in Buffy." Sam tossed in.

"And Star Trek when the Enterprise kept exploding." Dean tossed in.

Sam smiled. "I forgot about that one."

"If you're gonna be in a time-loop, Sammy, you have to know all your references off hand." He chided.

Silence spread for several long, undisrupted minutes until Sam's pleading tone finally broke through it. "So... Do you believe me?"

Dean shook his head slowly. "I really don't know."

TBC...


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

---------------

_"Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose." -The Wonder Years_

---------------

"What can I get you?" The woman behind the counter greeted Dean with the preoccupied tone that always seemed infused into small town waitresses.

"Coffee." He all but grunted. "Irish."

She eyed him wearily for a moment at his request, but gave in, nodding slightly and taking off into what the eldest Winchester could only assume was the kitchen part of this diner.

Dean wasn't really paying attention to his surroundings, he was absently playing with the paper wrapper of a straw and staring intently at the ceramic tile of the diner's counter, thinking about the conversation he'd had with his brother less than an hour ago.

A time-loop. An honest to God _time-loop_.

He still couldn't completely wrap his mind around the enormity of the concept.

This kind of thing didn't happen in real life - and yes, he knew the same could be said of _everything _the Winchesters did - but this was so far out there. This couldn't possibly happen in their reality. This just couldn't happen.

Yet Sam was so sure. And his brother wasn't exactly known for being wrong about these things. If anything, he was always frighteningly accurate about _everything _he researched.

Dean could never recall a hunt where Sam's information had been completely off base; the younger man always, _always _had at least something right. Some tidbit on knowledge that would lead them to the right conclusion.

The idea of Sam being wrong, this wrong, about something, shook him more than he cared to admit. He was still walking on unsteady ground, too, from all his contemplations, insights and almost-conversations of this morning, adding together and threatening to take over.

The waitress came up to where he was sitting at the counter and plunked a coffee cup down in front of him. Just as she walked away, another woman took it upon herself to sit down on the rotating bar stool next to his.

"Little early for that, isn't it?" She questioned lightly, sniffing his beverage.

"It's noon somewhere." Dean declared, taking a big gulp of the hot liquid. Swallowing, he tasted the subtle presence of alcohol, and a few seconds later, he could feel it warming his insides ever so slightly. Shit, had he needed that.

"It's two-thirty." The woman next to him pointed out, and Dean glanced in her direction.

She was hot, he couldn't deny that. Skinny, darkly tanned but dressed reservedly, casually. She had less curves than he was generally attracted to. Athletic was a good word for her. She looked in-shape.

"It's an expression." He said dully, not in the mood to chat. No, he was in a wallowing, 'self-pity that needed to be drowned out by lots of Whiskey' type of mood.

Basically, he wanted to sit here and think about Sam's theory until he decided whether to believe it, or have the kid shipped off to a funny farm.

"Geez," the woman seemed not to get his subtle hints. "You look like someone just ran over your puppy."

Dean snorted dryly, but didn't respond.

"Hey, Kim." His waitress from before came up again and greeted the woman at his side. "You want lunch?" Funny how much friendlier she seemed when addressing her.

"Nah," Kim, Dean supposed, shook her head. "I'll have what he's havin'" And she jerked a thumb in the direction of Dean's now half-drained mug.

"You sure?" The woman asked.

Kim shot her an impossible to read look that sent the waitress back to the kitchen again, shaking her head and sighing dejectedly as she went.

"Great service around here, huh?" Dean remarked absently, expecting equal cynicism in return.

Kim just laughed openly. The sound threw Dean for a moment, he wasn't expecting it and something about it... He couldn't place the feeling, but he turned to get a better look at this woman.

She had warm brown eyes with bits of hazel flaked around the outside of her pupils, they danced when she was laughing, and after a few moments of being ogled, looked on seriously as she watched Dean study her. She didn't seem put-off by the scrutiny at all, in fact, she seemed to study him right back.

A mutual understanding sprung up, where Kim had just been being friendly and upbeat, and Dean had intended on being rude and cynical, something new and undefined existed, it baffled them, and in response, they were fascinated by each other.

"I'm Kim." She introduced suddenly, shaking her head a bit, holding out her hand and not letting go of his gaze.

"Dean." He nodded automatically, taking her hand, impressed by her firm grip, and held on a moment longer than was necessary to be simply polite. When he did let go, it was only their hands that broke apart. Their eyes stayed locked.

Moments later the waitress came back with Kim's coffee and forced her gaze away. Dean felt a brief pang of loss that he pushed down and absolutely refused to acknowledge.

"Thanks, Heather." She seemed a little breathless, but perhaps Dean was imagining that.

"No problem." The waitress nodded. "It's good to have you home, by the way. How long you back for?"

Kim shot a quick glance at Dean, then answered casually. "I don't know yet. It all depends, ya know?"

"Not really," Heather shrugged. "I can't imagine doing what you do. Traveling all over the world. Helping people."

Dean kept his head down and his ears perked. That job description sounded eerily similar to his own.

Kim shrugged modestly. "I do what I can."

Heather nodded and looked like she was about to say more, but was pulled away a moment later by another customer. Dean waited until she was halfway across the diner before speaking again. He could feel Kim's eyes on his, but kept his glued to the table for the moment.

"So, what is it you do?" He wasn't sure why he cared.

"Peace Corp." She answered easily. "I just got back from a two-year stint in South America."

"Wow." Dean said and looked up, honestly impressed. He couldn't keep his eyes from her, so he gave in completely and shifted his whole body to face her. "Impressive. You're one of the good guys."

She just shrugged, smiling a little at his assessment. "I wanted to help people. And I wanted to get away from here." She admitted, drinking her spiked coffee with ease. "Far, far away. I mean, I grew up here. It's my home. My family's here. But..."

Dean said nothing to fill in the gap created by her lack of words, just stared steadily until she decided what to say.

"Have you ever felt trapped in a place?"

"No." Dean said at once, and got two raised eyebrows and a odd expression in return. He supposed most people felt trapped in their home town, and longed to get away from it. "No. I move around a lot."

"Even when you were a kid?" She seemed generally curious, and something about her inquisitive voice made the rest of the diner fade away.

"Yeah." He nodded. "My dad kept us moving. No one place more than six months. One school year, tops. He was in the Marines." Like that explained it all.

"And that never bothered you?" She sounded amazed, with maybe a little awe slipping through the cracks.

"Nah," Dean shook his head and found himself speaking honestly. "I liked to move around. Liked the freedom. Drove my little brother crazy, though."

"Brother?" She repeated. Dean nodded. "I have a sister."

"Older or younger?" He felt himself loosening up, giving in to the comforting atmosphere this woman created. He was sure the alcohol was helping, also, but for once in his life, with a woman, it wasn't the soul factor.

"Older." She sighed, tracing the rim of her coffee cup with a slender finger, pushing long, light brown hair behind her ear with the other, sweeping at her bangs as she went as well. "She's protective. Too protective, sometimes. Our parents died when we were young."

"Sorry." The eldest Winchester interjected automatically.

She shrugged. "I don't remember much about them. We grew up with our Aunt."

"Oh yeah?" He wanted to hear more but was remarkably bad at normal conversation.

Kim seemed to understand though, and went on. "She was nice enough. Just a little spacey. Like she kept expecting the seventies to come back in full swing."

"A flower child at heart?" Dean guessed, and she laughed again. He felt a certain triumphant at causing that, and an almost undeniable flutter at hearing it.

"Exactly." She smiled big at him. "She was good at letting us do whatever we wanted. And buying us beer. But with everything else, not so much. My sister looked out for me a lot."

"Wow." Dean let out a deep breath. "That's basically how it was with me and Sammy. Our mom died when we were young and our dad - I loved the guy to death - but he traveled a lot. Especially when we were kids."

"I bet that was hard. Looking after him, I mean." She said sympathetically, then studied him closely, biting the side of her lip absently. "Your dad, is he-"

"He died." Dean got out harshly, looking away, using the moment to gesture to the waitress -Heather- that he wanted another special coffee. Kim nodded when asked if she'd like a refill as well.

They got their drinks and took precautionary sips before either spoke again.

"Was it recently?" Kim asked. She wasn't exactly probing the subject, but she certainly wouldn't let it rest. If she did, both could sort of tell that the conversation would sizzle out and the spark between them might go with it, and neither wanted that to happen.

And as much as Dean didn't want to discuss his dad's death, he also didn't want to stop talking to Kim.

"Yeah." He admitted. "Couple months ago. He was murdered."

"God, that's awful." Kim seemed sincerely remorseful for him. "By who?"

"We don't know." Dean offered a sad half-smile. "That's what me and my brother are doing now. Trying to figure out who killed him." Which was as close to the truth as he could get without scaring her away.

"That's why you're traveling." She put it together, nodding understandingly. "That's why I've never seen you around here before."

"Yeah." He agreed. "We're just passing through."

"Where's your brother?" Which was a legitimate question.

"Back at our motel." He told her honestly. "He's researching this lead."

"You don't sound too enthused," she pointed out gently, and he couldn't help but smile.

"We kind of have a differing of opinions, at the moment." Understatement.

"That happens." She assured. "With siblings, I mean. I really don't know anything about your vigilante thing."

"It's a tough gig." He confided, wondering why he trusted her, yet scared to death that if he started questioning it too intricately that it might fade and leave him exposed to all the elements of hurt again. "But we can't give up until we find the...guy that did it."

She smiled genuinely, with all her heart she smiled at him, and Dean fell into that smile, into her gaze and believed for a moment that all the answers he was looking for could be found there.

"You're staring." She said with a delicate blend of bluntness and affection after a few minutes.

"Yeah, sorry." He grunted, rubbing the back of his neck.

"No, it's okay." She placed a hand on his arm softly and Dean chided himself when his breath hitched slightly and he couldn't tear his gaze away from it. Her skin was dark, from long days spent in South America, no doubt. His tanned skin looked almost pale in comparison. "I feel it too."

"Feel what?" He managed to croak, looking up and meeting her eyes again. God, those eyes.

"There's something between us." And her voice sounded husky.

Dean swallowed. Hard. "Why, you wouldn't be trying to seduce me, would you? 'Cause usually, that's my job."

"A lady's man, are you?" She teased, and a little of the static in the air around them faded.

"I get around." He divulged.

"Anything serious?"

"Never."

She raised her eyebrows.

"Once." He confessed.

"What happened?"

Dean thought back to Cassie, the one and only woman he had ever come clean with, given his whole heart to. "It didn't work out. She couldn't deal with what I do."

Kim nodded. "And no one since her?"

"There was this one girl." Dean found himself explaining. "Jo. The daughter of an old friend of our dad's. We ah...we had a lot in common. She was tough. But after a while, when I was with her... It felt more like I was looking after my brother, than trying to get to anywhere romantic." He paused, reflecting on everything he'd just told this virtual stranger with whom he felt an increasing connection. "What about you? Boyfriends?"

"South America really isn't the best place to pick up guys." She teased, and Dean laughed, leaning just a little closer to her in the process, loving that she hadn't moved her hand yet. "I was dating this one guy before I left, though, when I was training in California. It was fairly serious, he was a couple years older than me. But he didn't want to wait around while I went 'traipsing across the world' I think he's like a high-profile lawyer or something now."

"Huh." Dean responded articulately. "My brother was pre-law at Stanford."

"Impressive." She complimented.

"I know." Dean said with pride. "That sucks though, about that guy. But I guess, if he didn't want to wait-"

"Then it wasn't meant to be?" She guessed, narrowing her gaze playfully.

But Dean shook his head. "Then he wasn't worth it."

Their eyes met again and that connection sparked something rare and desired between them. Dean hadn't felt like this in a long, long time. Something nagging in the back of his mind, though, told him that this girl was going to be more trouble than he could possibly imagine.

He consciously chose to ignore that for the time being.

TBC...


	14. Chapter 14

A/N: This fic is set after Crossroad Blues, but not right after. A little time has passed, and I'm making it so that Dean and Sam started talking to Ellen again for some reason other than the one provided in the show. The Roadhouse and the Roadhouse crew won't be a major part of this fic, but I do need some basic information about them in there.

Chapter Fourteen

---------------

"_You're searching, Joe, for things that don't exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings -- there are no such things. There are only middles." -Robert Frost_

---------------

Dean got back to their motel room late in the afternoon, buzzed from the Irish coffees and his conversation with Kim. He hadn't done much thinking about Sam and his insane theory since he'd met the woman with whom he felt an undeniable spark, but as he entered their room, it all came rushing back to him.

Sam was sitting on the bed, clicking away intently on his laptop, dad's journal opened next to him. He looked up when Dean walked in. "Where have you been?"

"I think you're possessed." Was his opening line.

"Huh now?" He couldn't get a read on the emotions there, mostly because there were so many, so muddled together.

"Remember in Santa Monica, when you were like... I don't know, ten?" He asked, shrugging off his over-shirt and wishing he had a chair to drape it over. This motel room was remarkably small, even by their standards.

"I don't know." Sam's eyes narrowed at his brother's movements, and Dean wondered absently if he was stumbling. "I guess. Yeah, why?"

"That guy said he'd been abducted by aliens." Dean told the story despite Sam stating he recalled it. "We thought he was being tortured by an angry spirit, so we went to check it out."

"Yeah," Sam said again, and Dean could feel his eyes as he wandered around the confined space of their room. He stopped at a window by the front door and focused the majority of his energy on trying to get it to open.

"Once we got there, dad decided he believed the story, the alien thing, and we couldn't figure out why, since it didn't really make sense." He pried at the window, but it wouldn't budge.

"It's painted shut." Sam told him distractedly. "Are you drunk?"

"That's not the point." Dean turned away from the window and debated whether or not breaking the glass would be a good idea. It was just so damn hot in here. "The point is, we wanted to believe dad, even though his theory made no sense, just because it was dad."

"Yeah, I remember." Sam snapped again. "Seriously, where did you go? There's no bar in this town."

"And we almost did. We were all about to get beamed up to the mother ship."

"But he was possessed." Sam caught on. "Is that what you think this is? You think something's possessing me and making me tell you we're in a time-loop?"

"It sure as hell makes more sense than a time-loop, doesn't it?"

Sam sighed and Dean finally faced him, sitting down in his own bed and ignoring the way the world tilted ever so slightly as he did. "No, it really doesn't. Look, time itself is an abstract theory. There are scientists who believe we have to be _taught _to understand time as infants. I mean, hell, man created time."

"Ah..." Dean scratched his head, not sure of the booze was making him slow or if Sam really just had said something that illogical.

"I mean, we didn't _create _time," he backtracked, making Dean feel better "-but we started keeping track of it. We put numbers on it. Invented time-zones and clocks and daylight savings." His brother sounded factual. He was backing up an insane theory with some not so insane facts. And as much as the eldest hunter didn't want to admit it, just a teeny bit of logic was beginning to slip through the cracks of his idea. "Whose to say, with the right amount of mojo, that this couldn't be possible?"

"You're blowing my mind, kid." Dean laid back against his flat pillow and closed his eyes.

"I know." And for the first time all day, a new emotion filtered through Sam's voice. Instead of being persuasive and logical, trying to sell this idea and make Dean believe, he sounded sad, and almost at a loss.

"You know if this is true, it's gonna change..." Dean grappled around for the right words, and settled inadequately on, "Absolutely everything, right?"

"I know." He heard Sam sigh and shift around. "Dean?"

The elder brother grunted.

"I think, if we can find a way to rework this spell, to figure out how Lyn cast it in the first place, then we might be able to use it for something else." Sam's voice had switched from sad and low to low and almost hopeful, but Dean couldn't take it right now.

"Sammy?" He didn't open his eyes, but assumed at his brother's silence that he was waiting for him to go on. "Whatever you're about to say, can it wait a couple hours?"

Sam was silent for a long while, then hoarsely whispered, "Sure."

"Thanks," Dean sighed, and not long after that fell into a blissful unconsciousness that took him far away from time-loops, witchcraft mojo and the supernatural world in which they lived, and instead to a blissful place that had no concrete form, but possessed a definite familiar presence.

Kim.

---------------

Sam's working theory with this spell and it's connection to the demon needed to be verified. More so than he needed to dwell on Dean's reaction to the time-loop.

So, taking the initiative - and knowing that even if Dean were to wake up in time to check this out with him, he was already dealing with way too much - Sam left the motel room in which they were currently living and meandered his way outside, down the row of doors. He ended up at the front desk in as casual of a manner as he could muster.

"Yeah?" The old man sitting behind the counter grunted at him after a few minutes of his hovering, tearing his eyes away from the tiny TV sitting on the counter in front of him and what sounded like an old Bewitched rerun.

"Yeah, hi." Sam approached with an air of shyness, knowing that sometimes older people responded well to that. "I was just wondering-"

"You can't get a refund if you found something decaying in the back of your closet." He interrupted at once. Sam couldn't hide his cringe. "All sales are final. If you don't like it, leave town."

"Can't really do that." The tall hunter said with a tinge of bitterness that this old man had no way of understanding.

"Then sleep in your car." He snapped, turning back to his TV. "It's a damn fine one."

"I don't want a refund." Sam said calmly, without a trace of hostility. "I just wanted to know if you knew what that sound was."

"What sound?" He coughed once, paused, then started having a fit, pulling a dirty handkerchief out of his pocket, he hacked into it in an unbecoming manner.

It took him several minutes to calm the attack, and once he did, he looked up at Sam with tired, almost pleading eyes that had just moments ago been irritated and suspicious; the youngest Winchester felt guilty for pushing him, but as far as he could tell, he and Dean were the only guests at this motel, so he really didn't have a choice.

"I'm sorry," he sad sincerely. "But the howling sounds? The banging and the screeching? Coming from that old building out back?"

"Oh, yeah." The man fiddled with the dial on his TV as he spoke, and Sam noticed him cringe more than once. "Heard that last night. Never been there before."

He looked up and locked his gaze with eyes that were so much younger than his, if only to ensure Sam that he wasn't any more of a pushover. "You can't have a refund for that, either."

Sam smiled a genuine smile. "Don't want a refund." He assured again. "Just curious about it." He paused for a second, to see if this man would say anything more. He didn't. "Never heard it before?"

"That's what I said." He huffed, turning off his tiny TV in one swift move and picking it up as he stood. "Now, of you don't got a real reason for bothering me, I'm goin' upstairs."

Which, the youngest Winchester assumed, was where he lived. "Right." He called after the man's slightly wobbly retreating form. "Thanks."

Sam stayed at the front desk long after the old guy had disappeared, he stared through the front door at the parking lot and the solitary figure of the Impala, which hadn't been driven in days. He wanted nothing more than to wake his brother up and have him drive them out of this place, out of this insanity.

He wanted to go home. Even if home was the front seat of that car and the open road stretching out before them, or another tragic case that they at least had a shot in hell of making right.

He was sick and tired of things he couldn't fix or make better. Dad's death, Dean's grieving, Jo deciding to keep hunting and Dean's guilt, Ellen's anger, even her helpfulness and forgiveness. The Demon, his visions.

It felt like everything was spiraling out of control and he could scarcely hang on. The fact that Dean was hesitant, at best, to back him up, even believe him - plus the fact that he was probably going to forget all this in about eight hours - really wasn't helping.

Letting out a deep breath, he consciously tore his thoughts off that depressive track and focused his mind again. He _could _control this. He could fix this.

And, if he was right, maybe something much bigger as well.

TBC...


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

---------------

"_Why is it that every time I think I know the answers, someone goes and changes the questions?" -Mulder, The X-Files _

---------------

"Oh, God." Dean rasped, sitting up as fast as his spinning head would allow. "What the hell?"

Sam cringed as he closed the motel room door behind him. "I had a little run-in." He attempted to shrug like the words meant nothing, but the grimace of pain he couldn't conceal as he lifted his shoulder really killed that.

"With what?" Dean was out of bed by now and hovering in front of his little brother, who stood still enough for Dean to get a good look at his bruised face without having to be chided.

"Spirit." The youngest man grunted, meeting Dean's eyes and nodding, ensuring - or attempting to assure - him that he was alright.

"What spirit?" Dean asked, though he already knew. "The one that was howling all night?" The tall hunter nodded, then escaped quickly into the bathroom. Dean rubbed his face aggressively before turning his head and shouting in that direction. "Why, Sammy? You knew he was a pissed off son of a bitch."

"No I didn't." Came his brother's weak reply.

"The hell you mean you didn't?" Dean tended to get snappy when Sam did something stupid. "Howling, screeching, shaking walls, they all mean one thing, Sammy. Being trapped in a time-loop doesn't change that."

A head of shaggy brown hair poked out from the side of the bathroom door. "You believe me now?" He asked hopefully.

"I never really didn't believe you," Dean said distractedly. "That's not the point. I wanna know what was up with your suicide mission out there."

"It wasn't a suicide mission," Sam rolled his eyes and retreated again from Dean's view. "I just wanted to see something."

"You can't go off and do shit like that by yourself." Dean admonished, far from over the experience of waking up and seeing his bruised and bloody little brother coming through the front door.

"Ah, yeah, actually I can." Sam reemerged from the tiny bathroom, less bloody and clad in a different shirt, but still walking as if he were taking care not to jostle any injuries that Dean couldn't see. "I'm not twelve anymore, dude."

As if that was the end of the discussion, Sam turned around and used his unbroken appendage to heft his duffle bag onto the bed and began digging through it, completely discarding Dean's worry. Which made the eldest Winchester just a teeny bit upset.

"No, when you were twelve you took off and almost got yourself killed by a poltergeist. At least you're toning it down a little." Dean recalled that night when he was sixteen with an internal shiver. He'd been out on a date - or rather, a hook-up - it'd been one of the first times his father had ever let him take the Impala out by himself.

He'd never forget the mind-numbing panic that had encompassed him when he'd answered his cell phone agitatedly and was greeted by his father's frantic, 'Sam's missing, I think he went to that haunted house to try to save his friend.'

"I had to do that." Sam responded to the long-ago memory now. "That kid's family was in trouble, and you guys wouldn't believe me."

"We believed you, Sam, we just don't run into things half-cocked." Dean snapped.

"Lesson learned." Sam griped back, still not facing him. "Can we get back to now?"

"Yeah, let's." Dean's agitation was sky-high, and not just because this whole little dramatic escapade had torn him from a remarkably pleasant dream. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"Look," Sam finally rounded and looked at him with desperate, soulful eyes. "When we first got here, that spirit was about as friendly as they come."

"What?" Dean snapped. "He was pissed last night. You know-" He cut himself off and started shaking his head with ironical disbelief. "You're talking about the time-loop, aren't you?"

"Yeah." Sam's tone was quieter, more subdued now. He gave up on whatever it was he'd been searching for in his bag and sat next to it on the bed, cringing and placing a hand on his stomach as he went.

Dean, still angry but mostly worried, took this as his big brother cue and bent down in front of him. Lifting up his thin cotton T-shirt, he noticed at once a sensitized area on his abdomen that looked already like it was bruising.

He cringed in sympathy, "What did that?"

Sam shook his head. "Crowbar, I think."

"Man," Dean lowered the shirt and stood up, taking a seat on his own mattress, facing his little brother seriously. "What-"

"I know," Sam interrupted. "It was stupid. But I just wanted to figure this one thing out."

"You coulda woken me up, man. Whatever it was." Dean hated emotional moments, but this was a far-cry from the loaded conversation he almost started with Sam this morning - which seemed so long ago now. Plus, when his little brother was putting himself in unnecessary danger, something needed to be rectified immediately.

"I-" The bruised man started to defend himself, but Dean butted in.

"Seriously, whether I buy what's going on or not. I'd rather know what you're doing and think you're off your rocker than watch you kill yourself."

"Aw," Sam looked up and smirked. "I'm touched."

"I'm serious." Dean snapped, annoyed that Sam was making light of this.

"I know." And now he was serious. "And thanks. But I honestly didn't think he'd be that...destructive."

"He?" Dean questioned wearily.

"Jim Paulman. He killed himself 'bout fifty years ago out there."

"How-"

"It's all connected, Dean." Sam sounded almost hopeful. His eyes were pleading, to let him explain whatever it was he'd been trying to explain before Dean had taken his drunken time-out.

Sighing and leaning back slightly, Dean gave in. "Explain away, cowboy."

---------------

"_Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to believe." Laurence J. Peter, paraphrasing Sir Walter Scott_

---------------

Six Hours Later

"So tell me again why we're going if we _know _this guy is gonna come in and shoot one of us?" Dean's cranky voice was incredibly unbecoming, but God forbid anyone ever try to tell him that.

Sam sighed. "We have to think of this as a regular case."

"Yeah," Dean snorted. "Real regular."

"We still need to investigate, right?" Sam tried to appeal to his logical side, because at this point, that's really the only card he had left to play.

"What's the point if I'm gonna forget it tomorrow morning anyway?" Dean's logic trumped Sam's. The taller man was getting rather agitated himself.

"You might not." He tried and failed to sound hopeful. "Hell, if Bill Murray could figure it out, I don't see why you can't."

"Not exactly the same thing."

"Either way," Sam shrugged, broad shoulders rising and lowering beneath his short sleeve T-shirt. "I'll remember, and I'll fill you in tomorrow."

Dean shook his head and the younger hunter could see the vain in his neck bulging. "Man, this is so messed up."

"I know." Sam agreed.

"This shouldn't be happening." Dean growled.

"But it is."

"I should be the one remembering."

"Why?" Sam barked an almost laugh and the sheer amount of petulance behind the words.

"I don't know." The older man snapped with what could have been anger, but to the youngest brother's finely tuned ears was just additional amounts of sulkiness. "Because I'm older."

"Great logic."

"Yeah, well," Dean sighed, giving up that particular fight. "We gonna do this?" They had reached Randy's diner after a three minute walk and were now loitering outside the front doors.

Glancing at his watch, he noted that it was 2:22. According to Lyn, whom he hadn't spoken to since early this morning, the day would rewind at exactly 2:37. Meaning they had fifteen minutes to go in and...

And what? Sam didn't have a plan beyond that. He'd been too preoccupied today with Jim Paulman and his theory, which he'd spent all evening explaining to and fighting about with his brother, that he hadn't had a chance to focus on their current predicament in the short term.

Suddenly panicky, he opened his mouth to get his brother's opinion, but Dean wasn't looking at him. His eyes were focused through the glass doors of the diner.

When he walked in without preamble, Sam had no choice but to follow him.

Once inside, Sam noticed that his brother's eyes stayed locked on a table in the far back. The table where Lyn and her little sister were seated.

"Kim?" The eldest hunter's voice came out dumbfounded and Sam shared a glance with Lyn, who had looked up at their entrance and seemed equally confused at the greeting.

As Dean walked over, Sam followed, staying silent and keeping the opinionated slate in his mine purposely blank as he watched his brother interact with this woman.

Kim had stood up next to her chair as his brother approached. "Dean, what are you doing here?"

Okay, so they knew each other.

Dean's flannel clad shoulders went up then down as he made a nonplused sound. "Just lookin' for some grub."

"Yeah, us too." They shared a look that lasted a long time after that, a trance-like gaze that made it seem almost as if they were trying to read something other than emotion in each other's eyes.

Sam knew that look well, and was almost as enthralled by it's existence as Dean himself seemed to be.

Finally, it was Lyn that broke through the moment by clearing her throat loudly.

"Oh, sorry." Kim snapped her gaze elsewhere first. "Uh, Dean this is my sister. Lyn this is Dean and-" she gestured to Sam, but the elder woman cut her off before she had a chance to finish the introduction.

"Sam." She said. "Hey."

"Hi." Sam nodded at her and tried for a few seconds to avoid Dean's gaze.

"You guys know each other?" His brother's tone was an odd blend of suspicion and fear. Sam studied him as his eyes drifted from him, to Lyn - the only one of them sitting down -and back again.

"Lyn." He said the name distastefully, like he'd just identified something foul. "And her little sister." He looked back at Kim and his eyes changed at once from hard to sad.

Sam felt something clench at his heart.

"I'm sorry," Kim finally interjected, the most out of the loop and obviously not happy about it. "But how do you know my sister?"

It wasn't entirely clear to whom she was speaking, as her gaze was darting all around, but Dean took it upon herself to answer.

"Oh, Sammy and Lyn go way back." He shrugged carelessly. "Old college buddies."

"Lyn didn't go to college." Sam saw anger flare in this woman's eyes as she fixed light brown orbs on his older brother. "And she defiantly didn't go to Stanford."

Sam's brow creased as he wondered how she knew that. Dean stuttered and Lyn was shaking her head, trying and failing miserably to get their attention.

"Why are you lying to me?" The petite brunette sounded more put-off than seemed appropriate; because at best, Dean was a casual acquaintance. Unless that look they shared was anything to go by; and if it was, they were all in a bit of trouble.

"I-" Dean was nervous, pushing his hand through his hair then rubbing the back of his neck, bouncing around on the balls of his feet, shifting back and forth.

Sam's suspicions started to grow substantially in seriousness and likelihood.

Lyn cut off whatever lie his brother was about to spew. "How do you guys know each other?"

Kim stared hard at Dean for a moment longer, but when he wouldn't meet her gaze, she resided to answering her sister's question. "We met here this afternoon. We talked for a couple hours." Her words, while truthful, left the impression that she was leaving something out.

"Sammy," Dean addressed him for the first time since the diner's little bell jingled above their heads. "Is Kim the one, you know-" he shrugged and gestured; Sam knew exactly what he was asking.

It pained him to whisper hoarsely, "Yeah."

Dean just ducked his head and chuckled darkly. "Figures."

"You know what?" Kim too was shaking her head, only with much different emotions bubbling behind the surface of her exterior. "I don't really like people talking about me like I'm not here."

Every single person stayed silent; although Sam did take this momentary pause in the ping-pong conversation to notice Heather the bleach-blonde waitress staring at the four of them with unhidden interest.

_Get a life, _Sam thought with distracting amounts of irritation.

"Well, okay then." The youngest of the two sisters bent down and picked up her bag in a fluid motion, and was soon making her way out the double glass doors of Randy's diner with ease.

It took Dean only moments to chase after her, yelling before she made it to the doors, "Kim, wait!"

They were both gone, an angry jingle and retreating shadows in the dark the only evidence that they were there at all.

Sam was silent for as long as he could manage. "I don't think I've ever seen him chase after a girl before." He confided to Lyn, and Heather, who was undoubtedly listening in on them. "Not like that."

Lyn was shaking her head with much the same awe. "Kimmy was talking about him today. I didn't put together it was your brother, but... She likes him."

"This is so screwed up." Sam sighed.

"Amen to that."

A pause stretched between them, but didn't last long, time hadn't really been their friend lately.

"We have a lot to talk about." Sam initiated reality, "A lot to figure out."

"I know." Lyn sighed. "I do. I think-"

The unmistakable crack of a gunshot cut her off.

Heather cried out in fright.

Sam was out the door within seconds, Lyn keeping pace behind him with remarkable ease.

_Please, God. _Sam prayed. _Not again._

And his prayer was answered.

They hadn't run halfway through town when they found their respective siblings. Sam stopped in his tracks at the sight of his big brother holding Kim in his arms, his heart stopped much the same when Dean, his impenetrable rock of a superhero, looked up at him pleadingly with tears in his eyes.

"Sammy," he keened. "Sammy, do something."

Sam stood, frozen by the utter helplessness in his brother's tone, by the harsh knowledge that Dean was asking - _pleading _- for him to make this better.

To fix it.

And Sam stood by as Kim bled, Lyn cried and his brother mourned.

He was helpless.

TBC...


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

---------------

"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death." -Robert Fulghum

_---------------_

_The night was calm, full of possibilities and forgiveness. The sun hadn't quite gone down yet and it smelled faintly of rain; a coming storm that would revitalize their land and make it stronger, more apt for the growth of lush, green things. _

"_There're lots of lightening bugs out tonight." Sam came up behind where Dean was standing on a creaky wooden porch, looking out over a wide expanse of backyard. A myriad of trees encompassed the landscape behind it. _

"_Yeah," he agreed, not facing his brother, not needing to. He could feel Sam's body heat behind him, hear the content tiredness in his voice, picture without trying the stubble that had grown over his face in these last few weeks, marking the journey he'd been on, making him appear older - and at the same time much more innocent. _

"_Especially considering how many Mary and Michael caught in that jar you gave them."_

_Dean chuckled at the fake disapproval in his tone. "It's the rain." He informed the younger man._

"_It's not raining." Sam lifted a hand and scratched at his face, Dean heard the sound of his calloused fingers against the roughness there. _

"_It's about to." He said, knowing Sam already knew that. "The lightening bugs, they can sense that the clouds are about to be too dark, so they come out and try to light everything up more than normal."_

_Sam made an noise deep in his throat. "Save the tall tales for the kids, would ya?" He chided fondly._

_Dean finally turned to face him. The younger man looked worn down, exhausted, and unbelievably happy. He knew his little brother had been working incredibly hard lately, too hard for his own good, but not beyond his limits. The Winchesters had extraordinary limits. _

_Sitting down on the first step, he motioned for Sam to do the same. They sat close, like Dean's daughter and Sam's son so often did; ready to transport themselves to a world in which they were the only occupants, where they could speak a language no one else could comprehend and whisper secrets of mythic proportions. _

"_You used to beg me for my tall tales." He reminded, instead of starting a serious conversation. _

_Sam laughed and his extra stress seemed to melt away. He was a child again, fresh-faced and willing to take on all the obstacles of the world at his big brother's side. "Well, they were always so much better than fairy tales."_

"_Fairy tales are for wimps." Dean said. "We dealt with unbelievable things, nightmares, in the real world every day. It was only fitting that your bedtime stories were..."_

"_Eccentric." Sam filled in. "To say the least." _

"_You loved 'em." Dean said confidently, nudging his shoulder._

"_Yeah," Sam sighed, propping his elbow on faded jeans and resting his head in his hand calmly. That calmness was a gift. For both of them. "I loved the one about the wood nymphs who banded together to take down the Giant that threatened to take over their woods." _

"_Well everyone knows nymphs can control the weather." Dean scoffed._

"_And giants can be swept away in tornados." Sam added. _

"_Like the Wicked Witch of the West." He plucked at the sleeve of his flannel shirt. _

"_She got trapped under a house." The younger man amended. _

"_Right." Dean recalled thoughtfully. "Then which one had the scene with the tunnel and the boat that scared the crap out of you?"_

"_Willy Wonka." Sam told him. "And it only scared me because you said there was a demon that really did that, only instead of coming out the other end in a chocolate factory, it took you to a world where you had to listen to Metallica and Quiet Riot all day, and eat spinach." _

"_Oh, yeah." Dean's face lit up. "That was a bit of my best bull-shitting ever."_

"_I was five and thought Metallica was a group of Satan worshiping Gods that stuck an ice pick through the heart of everyone who didn't have a mullet." Sam informed him quite seriously and Dean burst out laughing. _

"_Where the hell'd you'd get that?" _

_Sam shrugged, smirking at the recollection and Dean gradually quieted. Something about the sharing of old memories, specifically those from childhood, was always calming to the two worn hunters. And was perhaps calming to everyone who had experienced any hardships in life. _

_It was bittersweet reminiscent, though, because no matter how pure the memory, it was in the past. Part of an innocence that could never be restored. _

"_I'm glad you tell those stories to Michael. And Mary. They deserve that." Years of reflection had made them both wiser, truer souls. _

_Dean nodded in agreement, knowing that no matter how bitter he became, he would never deny his children, or his brother's children, that spark of innocent childhood imagination. As it was, he wasn't even all that bitter. _

"_Did you tell Michael that he's gonna be a big brother yet?" Dean shifted topics not at all subtly, as was the Winchester way. _

"_No." Sam shook his head. "We're still waiting for the right time."_

"_You better do it soon." Dean chided. "He's gonna start to notice mommy getting fat."_

_Sam whacked his shoulder without the intent to cause pain and Dean chuckled. "No offence."_

_A long pause stretched between them, silence being eaten away only by the incessant chirping of crickets. _

"_When did dad and...and mom tell you? That were gonna be a big brother, I mean." Sam had difficulty getting the words out and stared steadily at the rapidly fading sun._

_Taking a deep breath, inhaling the scent of freshly mowed grass, Dean didn't let his surprise show. He hadn't been expecting that question. Although he wasn't sure why. It was the eldest Winchester who always avoided discussing their lost parents, not Sam. _

_He took a moment to dredge up long ago memories before speaking. "Ah...they didn't, exactly." He smiled at the scene playing out in his mind's eye. "God, I remember it so well. It's weird, you know, I remember more of the time from when she was pregnant than I do of after you were born."_

"_She probably spent more time at home." Sam offered and Dean nodded. "Kids can latch onto a lot when they have to." _

_Dean clasped Sam's shoulder in empathy then. Sometimes he forgot how it must be for Sam, having no memories at all of their mom. Memories were precious, and while Dean always tried to share his, he knew nothing could ever come close to the real thing. _

"_Anyway," he went on, pushing past a lump in his throat. "I was up late one night reading some comic book with a flashlight under the covers and I heard them fighting. Arguing. I got out of bed and went halfway down the stairs, where they wouldn't see me, but I could hear them."_

"_Such a cliché." Sam teased absently. They really had been. One fire took them out of the running for most Norman Rockwell type existence. _

"_Turns out they weren't really arguing." Dean could hear so clearly his father's concerned tone. "Dad was telling mom that she shouldn't be out of bed. That she needed to rest. She got all huffy and basically shouted, 'I'm pregnant, John. Get used to the midnight cravings.' he said something about her not being this cranky when she was pregnant with me, and I went back to bed. The next morning I asked dad what pregnant meant."_

_A laugh burst from Sam's throat. _

"_Dad got all pale and yelled for mom. She sat me down and told me I was gonna be a big brother."_

"_Huh." Sam said nothing more, but Dean thought he could detect a tell-tale trace of tears in his eyes. Old softy. _

"_It was funny," he went on. "'Cause they refused to find out if you were a girl or a boy."_

"_God, you're kidding." Sam got out in an even tone, thoroughly invested in the past Dean had brought forth. _

"_Well, they knew with me, and mom decided she wanted this one to be a surprise." _

"_Was it?" Sam asked. "A surprise?"_

"_Dad was convinced you were a girl." Dean smirked and Sam let out a deep groan. "I don't know why, he just insisted he was right. Mom would just nod all complacently every time he talked about it and wait until he left the room. Then she'd turn to me and say, 'You're gonna have a little brother'"_

"_I guess she was right." _

_Dean waited for the tidal wave of overwhelming emotion to pass over them before shrugging and declaring, "Nah. Most of the time I think dad was."_

_Sam punched his shoulder again and Dean took it in stride, knowing he deserved it, and laughing all the while._

_They settled down and remained in companionable silence for an immeasurable amount of time. The memory surrounded them, gave them a layer of comfort that was so hard to describe, yet too precious to ever let go of. Dean had never shared that with Sam before, and part of him truly believed that was because it was meant for this precise moment._

"_It's getting cold." Sam said finally. "We should go back inside." _

_Dean nodded and stood, feeling how his muscles pulled and his bones creaked ever so slightly. One factor of getting older he wished he could bypass. Sam stood as well, stretching, long limbs everywhere. _

_He went to go inside, opened the screen door that spilled warm, dim light into the fading darkness of the twilight, knowing his brother was right behind him. _

"_Hey, Dean." Sam called, stopping him at the last moment. The older man turned to him. His brother's scruffy face was a mask of unbelievable calm. A serene calm that both men knew was so rare and so well deserved. _

"_What, Sammy?" Dean questioned when his little brother said nothing more. _

_He smiled and tilted his head to one side slightly. "Wake up."_

_--------------- _

Dean remembered blood. Thick and spreading, condensing under his fingers. He remembered pleading. Not with God, or fate or anything else he tended, in moments of desperation, to bargain with; but with Sammy. He remembered begging his little brother for something so monumentally out of his grasp that he could only rationally deduce that the plea had been pathetically uttered in a moment of despair.

He recalled hazel-flecked brown eyes that looked at him so intensely and the terrifying feeling of his stomach dropping to his lower regions in desperation and the need for acceptance. He remembered more blood, Sam's blood - and that's when all half-conscious murky contemplations came to a screeching halt.

"Sammy?" He sat up, dimly recognizing their tiny motel room, and ignored the flash of almost-comfort he got from these surroundings.

"Dean?" The younger man was up and alert already. One quick scan informed the eldest brother that whatever he'd remembered about injuries and fear were null and void here.

"What-" the word was almost a slur, an angry one that needed no help in immediate persuasion, but did lack concrete definition. "What- how-"

"What do you remember?" Sam's calm voice only seemed to add to what was already overloading his heart, head, soul and sanity.

"What do I..." And he trailed off because he saw no logical reason to keep going. Nothing could be gained by repeating his little brother's cautious words, his desperate means of trying to grasp something Dean couldn't quite understand.

"What the fuck's going on?" The eldest Winchester bit out when no other reaction or response seemed viable. He felt himself begin to panic. It wasn't a feeling he was familiar with, and could only vaguely place from all the times - so many years ago - that he had to quell Sam's frequent panic attacks.

_Overload_, the young boy had explained back then when Dean had gathered the balls to inquire. _It feels like something's overloading and there'd nothing you can do to stop it._

Dean was feeling particularly overloaded, overwhelmed, right then, and couldn't stop the feelings despite desperate attempts.

"Calm down." Sam's rational voice had always had one of two affects on the elder brother; it's intended one, to calm and diffuse wayward emotions, or to increase said panic, to add to the overloading distress. Because Sam very rarely pulled out this voice with him. "What do you remember?"

"I don't know!" Dean shouted, and hated the guarded look that sprung up in Sam's eyes. Consciously, he tried to do as his brother demanded. He took deep breaths to aid in the calming of his racing nerves. Slightly more controlled a moment later he repeated, "I don't know."

Sam was on the mattress with him, sitting as close as he could without being in physical contact with the other man, and Dean wondered when he got there.

"Are you hurt?" The words came out irrationally to Dean's ears, because it was obvious he wasn't. Still, though- "That's what I remember."

"Me being hurt?" Sam echoed and Dean snapped.

"Yes!"

"I..." he too seemed a little lost. Which wasn't good for either of them. Only one brother could break down at a time, it was a rule of nature, an unconscious but greatly needed balance that kept them afloat. "I'm fine." The audible reassurance of what was already plainly visible was unexpectedly comforting.

Dean kept breathing.

"What time is it?" He didn't know why he asked, it was probably the most irrelevant thing he could have possibly inquire at the moment, but as soon as the words left his lips, the panic started to flare up again and he scanned their room, searching desperately for a clock, a watch, a cell phone, anything that might display the numbers that would answer his question.

"It's early." Sam answered without mocking, upon seeing his urgent motions. "A little after nine." The sun peaking through the ugly curtains on the other side of the room verified that it was morning.

He calmed again, not understanding his own reactions, and fearing what they might mean. He'd never felt this either, this fear of something that was coming from inside him. Something he couldn't control.

He felt a sudden greater connection, an understanding of his little brother's constant inner turmoil where his psychic episodes were concerned.

Long, silent moments stretched between them, and Dean was unnaturally and inexplicably grateful for the uninterrupted, unrushed time.

"Are you okay?" Sam's cautious words came eventually, and Dean didn't know how to respond without lying.

"I think we need to talk."

In the end, it wouldn't matter who had uttered the words, because they both knew it was true. They both knew something extraordinarily big was about to unfold.

TBC...


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

---------------

_"Understand Death? Sure. That was when the monsters got you." -Mark Petrie, Salem's Lot, p139, by Stephen King_

--------------

"Oh, fuck this." Sam growled, throwing the twisted motel blanket and sheet of his sweat slicked body in one fierce movement.

He'd woken up angry. So angry at the whole entire world. At Lyn, for dragging him - them - into this colossally screwed up situation in the first place. At himself for not putting it together sooner, for getting roped in like the sucker he was. Illogically he was angry at Dean, for not being able to remember, for not being able to take charge like he always did when things spiraled beyond his control.

He was angry at having once again been pulled out of his slumber and into this reality, at not having a handle on anything or anyone, having no control. He was pissed at his father for dying and the demon for doing this to them - again. He wanted to scream and go on a rampage, to destroy everything in his path until he destroyed this life that had been built for them.

Mostly, though, he was just angry, and he could no longer fight it.

---------------

"_I think we need to talk." _

_In the end, it wouldn't matter who had uttered the words, because they both knew it was true. They both knew that something extraordinarily big was about to unfold. _

"_I think this time-loop is the key to destroying the demon." Sam said it as calmly as he could manage, which wasn't bad, considering he'd had this conversation not twenty-four hours ago._

"_What?" Dean, unfortunately, couldn't remember that. _

"_Jim Paulman was as friendly as Casper when we got here," Sam focused his gaze just south of his brother's head. It didn't matter what resided in his eyes right now - it was all about the words. "Since we've been here, since the time-loop started, when Lyn cast the spell about a month ago; he's been getting angrier."_

"_Spirits don't get-"_

_But it wasn't Dean's turn to talk. They were back to preschool etiquette. "This one does." Sighing, Sam took a different course of action with his explanation. "A demon, in it's simplest state, is just a whole lot of angry spirits. Right?"_

"_Sort of," Dean shook his head, trying to understand. _

"_It was the first thing dad ever taught us," Sam went on. "The fusing of a demonic parasite occurs in another dimension."_

"_Hell." The eldest hunter filled in, voice flat._

"_Probably," Sam agreed. "And an Exorcism, if broken down and translated into its most basic structure, is just a really powerful banishing rite."_

"_It's more complicated than that." Dean reminded._

"_I know." And he did. "But in essence, a Demon is destroyed the same way a spirit is."_

_He opened his mouth and it looked like he was going to protest, but then he shut it again, and ran a hand through his hair. Sam kept staring at a cigarette burn in the wall until his brother nodded reluctantly. "In essence. Simplified. Yeah, that's all it is."_

"_Okay," the taller man nodded, glad beyond belief that they could still agree on that. "Something about this spell, repeating the same twenty-four hours again and again, it's destroying Jim Paulman's spirit." _

_Dean was silent. _

"_I've been watching it happen." Sam rushed on. "I didn't catch it at first, but now..." he chuckled, "there's no way I can miss it. When I was in there-"_

"_You went-"_

"_Earlier," Their eyes met for the first time in what felt like a long while. "Before."_

_A curt nod was his permission to keep going._

"_His spirit is tied to that building because he killed himself there, and until Lyn cast her seriously screwed up mojo, he was more than happy to stay there, because he knew he had eternity, and that's what he'd died for."_

"_With you so far."_

"_But once the time-loop started, he, it... Self-destructed." Sam could think of no better term. _

"_Like in Salem?" Dean's innocent inquiry came very close to reducing his little brother to tears._

"_Yes." Sam managed, almost gasping in relief. "Like the accused witches in Salem. Because their spirits still possessed-"_

"_The human need to run away from danger." Dean quirked an eyebrow._

"_They didn't know they were dead, so they were trying to escape it. Jim Paulman knows he's dead."_

"_So he's trying to escape..."_

"_The time-loop." _

_They were back on the same page, they were communicating like they hadn't in years. It would be cause for celebration were the circumstances not so grim. _

"_Because he thinks its gonna kill him?"_

"_Because he knows," Sam made eye contact again and said with his expression what he desperately hoped would ring true in his words. "He knows its going to destroy him."_

---------------

It had been too long since he'd spelled it out. Too long since he'd gotten his brother even half onboard his insanity laced idea and still they were going no where.

He'd seen his brother die too many times. Period.

Felt death creep up on himself time and time again, and he didn't like it. The black spots in his line of vision, the tunneling of his sight, the intense and unbearable pain. The terror when that pain ceased to be. When he could no longer feel his head rested on Dean's lap or chest, when his fingers were no longer numb from the death grip of his brother's hand. When he couldn't hear Heather's cries or the distant scream of the sirens. When it all went away.

He couldn't deal with that again.

Couldn't watch his brother fall in love with Kim every time he met her. Couldn't watch the fiery woman recuperate his feelings so easily. He couldn't stop thinking about the life they might have gotten had this whole supernatural plot never came to be, and it was driving him into something so far beyond insanity. Because insanity would be a blessing at this point.

He couldn't keep watching his big brother struggle. Each morning was a slightly new memory, each familiar thing that triggered a recollection in El Groton ever so slowly, every time a light dawned in the other man's eyes, Sam couldn't help but think it wasn't fast enough.

Because every night one of them still died. Dean, Sam, Kim or Lyn. Each death had its own compass of grieving, and each scenario sparked a slightly different reaction come morning.

Sam dying left Dean to wake up in their motel room panicked, but remembering the most, accepting the truth more readily. Kim dying was a close second, but always seemed to leave the eldest hunter more than a little depressed when Sam took the time to spell it out once again, that she would more than likely end up dead- and who could blame him.

It was the hardest for the brothers when it was Kim; because the mornings following that death, Dean would recall little if anything, and then they would be at the beginning again.

---------------

"_So you think," Dean's voice was borderline disbelieving, with just a dash of hopefulness thrown in for good measure, "That his spell - this fucked up spell - could be the key to killing the demon?"_

"_I do." Sam nodded firmly. "It would take a lot of work and a lot of control, but I'm pretty damn sure, that if we managed to catch the yellow-eyed son of a bitch in a time-loop that repeated for only, lets say a few seconds, then all we would have to do is..."_

"_Watch him spontaneously combust?"_

_Sam nodded. "There would have to be more to it." He added quickly. "Binding spells, purifying rites. We'd have to do the whole thing on hollowed ground, without question, and-"_

"_But," Dean interrupted, holding up a hand, "You really think doing this would send him back to hell?"_

"_No." Sam declared solemnly, not a hint of anything other than complete sincerity in his tone. "No. I think doing this - if we can make it work - would do exactly what dad wanted to do. I think it would destroy the bastard. Kill him once and for all." _

_---------------_

He'd written it in dad's journal. Started a new page with the header; How to turn a botched spell into a dead demon - it had made Dean smile, at least, when he'd read it.

Sam was way beyond the point needing any reminders. No more deja vu, no more visions; he had it all on eternal repeat in the forefront of his mind, and frankly, it was starting to get the best of him.

"Dean." He shook his brother roughly from sleep. Last night, Dean himself had died; and he remembered less from those experiences than from watching Lyn take that great final plunge.

He knew today was going to be a hard day, and he was too angry, too overwhelmed, to deal anymore. "Dean! Get up!"

"What..." his brother's groggy question was muffled behind the pair of jeans Sam had just tossed at his head.

"Get up." He ordered. "Get dressed. We're leaving town."

"I..." Dean scrubbed a hand through his messed hair and over his stubbly face, not seeming to comprehend. "What's going on?"

Sam himself was already dressed, shoving the few things they had out haphazardly into their duffle bags and keeping his death grip on the car keys he had clenched in his hand.

"I had a vision." He more or less lied. "Get up. Get dressed. We have to go."

And that was all it took for Dean to obey. Not five minutes later had Sam revving up the Impala's precious engine, backing out of the motel parking lot and screeching through the streets like he was participating in a Fast And Furious worthy drag race.

"Whoa," Dean commented lightly, still rubbing sleep from his eyes, not even awake enough to insist on driving himself. "What's the rush?"

"I'll tell you in a second." Sam mumbled, attention elsewhere. Because it would take only a few seconds for them to speed out of this town. Away from Lyn and her monumental fuck-up, away from Kim and his big brother's never ending stream of constant disappointments.

They could work the case from the outside, Sam reasoned, let the time-loop not directly affect them so they could think more clearly.

They could pretend they'd never stumbled across it in the first place, for all Sam cared. As long as he wouldn't have to relive this day ever again.

It would be over. The sign on the side of the road even ensured them;

_You are now leaving El Groton, New Mexico. Please Come Again!_

They were free.

Sam let out a breath, then a throaty, almost hysterical laugh - Dean looked at him oddly - it was finally over! It was-

Then he was falling.

The great, overpowering free-falling that only existed in the deepest reaches of nightmares. The free-falling that urban legends were made of; if you hit the ground in your dream, you'll die in real life.

It was a ludicrous idea, Sam knew, yet he couldn't help thinking - as he plummeted downwards, his internal organs racing to keep up with him, everything around him too blurred to make out - that he knew what was coming, and he might rather have died.

The world went black for a moment that could have spanned a decade, and while there was no actual sensation of landing, he came-to with a gasp and a jerk that might as well have broken bones and crushed limbs.

He was back in their motel room.

He had inadvertently started the day over by trying to get away.

He had arrived at once again at square one.

Sam Winchester, for the first time in twenty-three years of life, finally, truly knew what it meant to be absolutely, inarguably and without any hope for escape - stuck.

TBC...


	18. Chapter 18

Time And Time Again 

_A/N: I'm really sorry about the long delay. Like I've explained in my Bio, I'm really losing touch with this fandom. I'm trying my absolute hardest to get this thing finished and - if my inner muse is leading me correctly - I only have another two or three chapters after this one to complete. _

_I hope this isn't as lacking as I feel like it is, but things are finally starting to move forward, and I have an ending in sight. I really do. Read and Review and let me know what you think. I'll try to post the next one sooner, I promise. _

Chapter Eighteen

---------------

"_In depression . . . faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come -- not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. . . . It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul."-William Styron _

---------------

"We're supposed to be trying to get out of this!" Lyn shouted angrily, slamming her fist down on the table of Calvin's Corner, completely ignoring the disapproving glares she was receiving from the rest of the store's population.

Even Sam, who was usually so considerate of things like manners and politeness, couldn't find it in himself to care if they were disturbing others, even if the others could hear what they were discussing - none of it would be real tomorrow anyway.

"That's what I'm doing." Sam gritted out through his teeth.

"You're talking about ghosts!" She shouted, and more than a few people turned to stare.

"Yeah," he said easily, with all the grace of his older brother. "Because it's relevant."

"To getting us out if this?" She questioned. "To saving Kim?"

"Sure." Sam agreed.

"You're an asshole!" She screeched.

"I'm also currently the only person you have on your side." He said blandly - refusing to respond to the anger - and at that, Lyn deflated ever so slightly. Silence echoed around them again, and Sam shifted his focus back to the textbooks, notebooks and his dad's journal - all spread out before him.

"Where _are _Kim and Dean?" She asked, obviously trying to steer them away from another shouting match. That's all they'd seemed able to do lately - fight with one another.

"Off flirting somewhere." Sam responded dryly. Darkly.

"Great." Lyn sighed, rubbing her eyes as if she might be able to erase the events of the last... He didn't even know how to phrase it as a time sequence anymore.

"Sam?" She called his name softly, a few seconds later. The youngest Winchester shut the textbook he was currently scanning desperately and looked up, all his dark shaggy hair falling into his eyes.

"Yeah?" He responded with gentleness, just by her tone, he could tell where her mind was.

"When this is all over...if you, and Dean, find a way to make this better... Fix it.. Is Kim... I mean..." And Sam did know what she meant.

But he couldn't answer. "I don't know, Lyn. I really don't."

She nodded, but a tear rolled its way down the side of her cheek unchecked.

Sam kept searching for answers.

---------------

"Well, just say it's real." Sam pushed against his brother's stubborn refusal yet again, thinking that by now he was better at doing that than he ever had been before. "How would we do it?"

"I don't know," Dean shrugged carelessly and turned back to his duffle bag. "Can we do this deep-and-meaningful, hypothetical question thing later? I met this chick in town this morning and I'm meeting her in a few minutes."

"Please, Dean." Sam sighed, wondering absently if he could age in a time-loop. "Humor me?"

"I don't know," he shrugged again, but sounded more thoughtful. "Find a way to reverse the spell, I guess."

"It was a spell done wrong." Sam reminded. "It doesn't have a counter-spell."

"Because it technically doesn't exist. Right." He nodded, recalling what his brother had told him a few minutes ago.

"Yeah."

"Say it backwards." Dean decided, still not looking at Sam. Thus missing the way his eyes grew big at those words.

"Huh?"

"Well, it doesn't always work," his brother started. "It depends on the elements evoked and the magic used, but sometimes, just saying the whole thing backwards makes it end."

Sam let hope shine through for the first time in what felt like a lifetime.

---------------

Writing the whole spell out backwards took more time than it had to create in the first place, according to Lyn. They had to go through all the books she'd used, all the websites she'd consulted. Double-check everything and then check all the double checks.

By the time they were done, Sam was about ready to have a mental breakdown. Dean had died three times in a row and on the fourth night, when death had finally changed courses and chosen him instead, he wished it could have stuck.

He couldn't go on like this.

---------------

The spell - the reversed spell - was complete after over a week and a half of work and Sam wasted no time in going outside and reading it aloud. Slicing his own hand for the blood sacrifice when needed.

It was long. Took almost twenty full minutes to complete.

And nothing happened.

They woke up the next morning and did it all again.

Lyn and Sam tried the next day, at the cemetery where Kim had been buried originally. They stood over the place where her grave should have been. Sam sliced his hand in the same spot and cringed in pain.

Nothing happened.

Kim died that night.

He tried on his own the first thing the next morning. In the abandoned, haunted building by their motel. Jim Paulman screeched right along with him and Sam was pretty sure his hand was infected where he kept cutting it - even if the injuries did heal every night, his body still didn't seem to like the abuse.

He went through the motions that day - felt his heart break more than a little as he watched his brother falling in love - and wouldn't even speak to Lyn about it.

He was almost ready to throw in the towel.

Then Lyn died that night and he knew it was time to give up.

---------------

"I quit." He was sitting on the edge of his bed, as he had so many times since this all started. He was looking at nothing and speaking softly.

"Quit what?" Dean asked through mouthful of Egg McMuffin, Sam's sat ignored on the bedside table.

"This." He said, knowing that Dean wouldn't understand, but not caring anymore. "We're gonna die here."

"What the hell are you talking about, Sammy?" Dean snapped at that, sounding more serious immediately, not really liking how his brother could say something like that so carelessly.

"This place." He said sadly, completely and totally defeated. "It's gonna kill us. We're trapped here, and we're gonna die. And there's nothing I can do to stop it."

"Did you have a vision?" Dean's voice was a lame attempt at controlled and steady; Sam just barked a hollow laugh.

"You're lucky." He said, still not paying any real attention to anything but his own depression. "You're not going to remember any of this. You're not going to know how close we were to getting out."

"Sammy..." And there were a million and one things that could be plucked out of his tone then, a million things that the younger man couldn't and wouldn't face up to. An entire destiny, their lives up to this point - it was all for nothing, and Sam felt tears start to well up in his eyes.

This was life. This was his life. And there was no way out of it.

The thought of suicide briefly floated through his mind, but it was quickly discarded. If he couldn't stay murdered at the hand of someone else, he knew he couldn't stay murdered at the hand of himself. Plus, even if it did work, he could never do that to his brother.

No, this was an entirely new feeling of defeat. This was a circle of hell that hadn't yet been explored. This was worse than the demon, and Jessica's death and everything else he'd ever lived through.

This was-

His thoughts were cut off abruptly as the unmistakable sound of an explosion reverberated throughout their room. The walls shook and Dean dropped his sandwich, both brothers instinctively grabbing onto something to steady themselves with.

It was over as abruptly as it had started and Dean was the first one to speak. "...the fuck?" He got out gracefully, and Sam could only widen his eyes in shock.

"I don't-" He started to answer, but then it hit him. He was off his bed and across the room in one bolt, Dean following close behind.

"Sam-" But as the younger brother threw open their motel room door, words escaped him.

There, about three hundred feet away from their motel, stood a pile of ruins - exactly where Jim Paulman's dilapidated old farmhouse stood only thirty seconds before. There were still bits of debris fluttering to the ground almost peacefully.

It was the most uplifting thing Sam had seen in months. Years, maybe.

"What the hell?" Dean spoke slowly from behind Sam's right shoulder, words coming out as if he were in shock - which he probably was - studying the mess in front of them with wide eyes that Sam didn't have to look at to see clearly.

"Dean," Sam was grinning from ear to ear, despite the little voice in the back of his mind - dad's voice - that was telling him never to get his hopes up. "I think there might be a chance for us after all."

TBC...


	19. Chapter 19

Time and Time Again

_A/N: The countdown has begun - so to speak. One more chapter after this one, then an epilogue, and that'll be it. For this fic, anyway. I have a sequel already written that's really only loosely tied to this one. But I'll talk more about that when this one's over. _

_Read and review. Tell me how I'm doing._

Chapter Nineteen

_---------------_

"_The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn." -H.G. Wells._

_---------------_

Two days passed, then three, and Jim Paulman's farmhouse remained destroyed - a destruction site of hope. Kim had died twice in a row, and Lyn was getting anxious, nervous. Scared. Sam found it easier and easier to explain the details of their situation to his big brother every morning.

Dean was slowly becoming more accepting of this, what he had deemed their fate, and Sam was walking on water.

"I have an idea." He said late one afternoon.

Their motel room looked more like a bombsite than the one out back did by this point. Actually, it eerily reminded Sam of their father's motel room the day Dean had come and visited him at Stanford. God that seemed like a lifetime ago.

Newspaper articles and printed out internet papers were tacked to the walls, dozens of textbooks were stacked in random piles about the room. Half-finished take-out meals were molding on their nightstands.

They'd found, if they sprinkled salt around all the entrances to the room and chanted a few isolation rites, they could keep everything as it was from one rewind to the next. It didn't keep Dean's memory in tact, but it sure as hell helped.

"What?" The older man in question was sitting cross-legged on his bed, chewing the end of a pen absently. Lyn was on her stomach on Sam's bed, elbows propped up so she could read and Sam himself was seated on the floor across the room.

His right foot had gone numb hours ago, but he was way passed the point of actually giving a crap.

"Time." He said, sounding solid and sure.

"Three-thirty-eight." Lyn answered him, misunderstanding.

Dean held his gaze, though; he knew Sam's logical tone all too well.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "Time."

Lyn looked up again and studied him.

"The spell we wrote to counteract yours," he went on. "I've been going over it, and there's no reason why it shouldn't work."

"Except that it doesn't." Dean growled, angrily. The other two parties involved in this insane game hadn't been sharing his recent enthusiasm, and he couldn't blame them.

For Dean and Kim stood to lose much more than he did if - _when, _he told himself sharply, _when _- they got out of this. Lyn might lose her little sister, after having suffered through this hell for months in the quest to get her back. And Dean... Dean might lose the one person he'd fallen for since Cassie, way back when.

And while Sam wanted desperately for his brother to be happy, knew the elder man deserved it like no one else, he also knew that they _had _to get out of El Groton. It had become a matter of survival.

"Because we're not timing it right." He went on, consciously keeping the elated quality of his tone under control.

"We've tried it a hundred different ways." Lyn sighed. "All the variables we could possibly play with -"

"Not all of them." Sam interrupted.

Dean caught his brother's gaze. He understood.

"You want to say the spell _while _time is rewinding itself." He stated bluntly, as if he himself had thought of that before just now.

He wouldn't be surprised if he had, Sam mused. It was the most logical thing in the world. But for once, Dean didn't want logic; he didn't want a quick fix. He wanted hope.

"At Two-thirty-seven." Lyn contemplated aloud, obviously having not considered that. "Would it make a difference?"

"Your spell created a ripple in time." Sam explained. "Probably in the whole dimension. The only time that that would be open and vulnerable enough to strike back at, would be the time when the ripple occurs."

"In simple terms," Dean smirked lightly. "Yes."

Silence echoed around them. It was a silence Sam could respect, as in it, Lyn and Dean's fears were taking over. They were weighing the pros and cons, deciding whether or not to protest.

But Sam was way beyond that. He knew what needed to be done. He knew they had to fight this fight and save themselves. Even if there was a casualty.

"So..." he spoke hesitatingly, eventually, when it became clear he'd have to be the first to do so. "We have a plan?"

Lyn looked away, out the nicotine-stained window to her right, but nodded slightly. That reluctant agree was enough for Sam.

Dean bit his bottom lip and studied his brother. Green eyes met brown and a silent conversation took place.

_I don't want to lose her. _

_I know, but we have to get out. I'm getting desperate. _

_I'm scared. _

_I know that too. And I'm so, so sorry. _

"Yeah, Sammy." Dean finally sighed, rubbing his eyes and closing the book in his lap with an air of finality. "We have a plan."

---------------

A little less than nine hours later they were back at the motel room again. The air was charged with energy from the upcoming battle, that wasn't technically a battle at all.

"Where's Lyn?" Dean didn't seem very willing to let silence drift between them. Sam knew it was because he was afraid of the things lurking in it.

"At the farmhouse already," He answered, going through his papers one last time, making sure he had the ceremonial dagger, salt and other things he would need. "She's setting up the Pentagram."

Their spell called for a giant chalk outline of a pentagram that would capture the energy of the spell, focus the power they were drawing.

"I think she should say it." Dean spoke quietly, and when Sam turned to look at him, he was facing away.

"What?"

"She should say the spell." He clarified, "She's the one started this whole thing, she has to be the one to finish it. It's a balancing, Karma thing. Pastor Jim used to tell us all about it. 'He who evokes the power-'"

"'-must reign it in.'" Sam finished, recalling the long-ago words, surprised at himself for not remembering them before. "You're right. She does have to be the one to say it."

"I know."

Sam closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, and opened them again when he thought he had a tighter grip on the world around him. "Why didn't you say something earlier?" His voice didn't hold anger, just general curiosity.

Dean shrugged, still facing away, but Sam knew it was a lie, and waited. "I wasn't sure I wanted it to work."

The words hurt, despite having expected them, but he knew that was illogical. Dean wasn't trying to trap him. He wasn't their father and this wasn't five years ago. This set of circumstances only felt parallel to what Sam remembered from his youth. In actuality, this was a whole new game with a brand new set of rules.

"Because of Kim." He didn't phrase it as a question. Didn't need to.

"Yeah," he whispered hoarsely, and Sam felt his heart break a little. Again. He wasn't sure there was much left to crack.

"Sammy," he finally turned to face his little brother. His eyes shining with a grief the younger man hadn't seen since they'd burned their father's corpse. "I don't want to lose her."

"I know." Sam swallowed a lump in his own throat. God, how this was killing him. "But you don't know that you will."

"There's a good chance she'll die." Dean argued, sounding angry as a default. "The spell Lyn cast originally was done to save her. To bring her back. And we're reversing it."

Sam shook his head, not wanting to give in that easily. "Yeah," he had to agree. "But we don't know that it will. This is magic we've never seen before, Dean. This spell opens up so many new doors. It changes everything."

"I know." Dean sighed. "And we don't have a choice."

"I'm sorry." Sam said, seeing now how useless those words had been.

"I know." He repeated, then forced a smile onto his features. "But hey, if we get out of this alive, just think of everything we can do."

"Kill the demon," Sam honestly couldn't recall if he'd rehashed his theory on that to his brother since the last time he'd lost his memory.

Either way, Dean seemed to understand what he meant. "Yeah."

"Why do our lives, our job, always seem to cost us everything we want?" Dean spoke softly, words sounding strained and Sam was forced to recall the early days of their entrapment in El Groton, before and right after he'd figured out what was going on.

His brother had told him that he'd had enough of hunting, that their lives did nothing but run in meaningless circles and he was ready to throw in the towel. Well, right after the demon was dead, anyway.

Sam wondered now if those feelings were genuine, or a subconscious castoff of being trapped in this circle of time. He wasn't sure if he really wanted to know the answer, though; as it had the possibility to destroy everything he had ever known.

"I-" he started to answer, not sure what he wanted to say, not used to playing this role of comforter, protector.

Luckily, if he chose to see it that way, he was cut off. Lyn picked that moment to reenter their motel room.

She looked grave, standing in the darkened doorway, facial features giving away many of the same fears Dean had just spoke aloud.

"It's ready." She said shortly. "We have seven minutes before we start chanting."

"Right." Sam nodded, glancing to his brother automatically.

Dean held his gaze firmly, fears and desperation pushed aside for this, the only emotion he could show now.

He -_they_- were ready for battle.

TBC...


	20. Chapter 20

Time and Time Again

_A/N: I don't have to go to work all week, all my laundry's done, I've packed all I can pack since I'm not actually moving for another two and a half months, I've cleaned, filled out school stuff and I don't have a car. This, ladies and gentleman, is the end result of all that. _

_Two chapters in two days. _

_Enjoy!_

Chapter Twenty

---------------

_"You can never plan the future by the past."__ -__Edmund Burke_

---------------

They'd timed the spell to the millisecond. Time was no longer an ignorable quality of everyday life. It wasn't something they had to take for granted anymore. Time was as precious as their lives were, at the moment, and though they didn't know it now, that would ultimately change the course of their destinies.

Lyn saying the words and performing the rite didn't actually change much. She'd done it already, a few times when they'd first created it. They _had _tried every variable, after all.

"If it doesn't work here," Sam said logically as they trekked through the tall grass on their way to the farmhouse. "We'll try it again at the graveyard or the diner. They're the three main hotspots. It's gotta work at one of them."

"And if it doesn't?" Dean's voice was calm, cold even. Sam cringed.

"It will."

"I told Kimmy goodbye today." Lyn informed them. The three of them walking together, they made an okay team. If the circumstances weren't what they were, Sam might find a certain level of irony in that. Lyn fit in good with them, but Jo hadn't been able to hack it.

"Yeah," Dean chuckled dryly, seeing an irony of is own. "Me too."

Sam swallowed past the lump that seemed permanently lodged in his throat as of late. "I'm sorry, guys." He whispered.

"Let's just get this over with." Dean snapped, never liking prolonging the inevadible.

It was an easy enough request. They'd arrived at the farmhouse.

---------------

There wasn't much there anymore to indicate that a building had once existed. Just piles of bricks and siding; and a concrete base that had once been the floor.

Just standing on the perimeter of this place, Sam knew something was bound to happen tonight. The whole area was charged with energy, it practically crackled around them. The ghost of Jim Paulman had finally been destroyed by the time-loop, and Sam believed that that had cast off enough energy for them to make this work.

"Well," Dean clapped his hands together, faking normality for Sam's sake, Lyn's benefit or his own sanity; it wasn't clear. "Let's get this party started."

They were all grateful for it nonetheless.

The pentagram was drawn right where Lyn said it would be, taking up the majority of the concrete platform on which they were working. The top of the supernatural star was pointing north, and that's where Lyn stood. Sam and Dean took their places at the two closest points on either side of her.

"Two minutes." Sam glanced at his watch and informed them.

They all nodded.

"So..." Dean spoke into the silence yet again. "What if this doesn't work?"

"I already said-"

"No," he interrupted his little brother. "I mean what could this do _other _than just reversing the time-loop?"

Sam sighed. Now was so not the time to bring this up. "Dean-"

"It could turn the whole town into a bigger version of what we're currently standing on." Lyn interrupted. With a dagger in one hand and a powerful spell clutched in the other, her casual words sounded more than a little out of place.

"Nice," Dean nodded, using sarcastic humor to get his through everything as he always did. "What else?"

Sam sighed. _If you can't beat 'em..._ "It could erase our memories entirely. Turn us into drooling vegetables."

"It could easily kill us." Lyn continued.

"Or it could cement this into reality forever." Sam finished. "And we would be trapped here for eternity."

"Hell," The word came out as grunt. Damn, fuck, and holy shit would have worked just as well with the tone he had coupled the word with. But the irony of it was too hard to pass up.

Sam laughed. A choked laugh he'd tried to hold back for the sake of politeness but had gotten out anyway. Dean and Lyn looked at him as soon as they heard it, and just as the youngest Winchester brother was about to burst into apology, Dean chuckled.

"What?" He vocalized his protest when the other two switched their absurd stares to him. "That was kinda funny."

And soon they were all laughing, so hard that tears poured down their faces in steady streams.

"We could all die." Lyn repeated, and laughed harder.

"I hope Jim Paulman saved us some room in hell." The laughing carried on.

They were borderline hysterical when Sam's watch started to beep. And just as suddenly as it began, the laughing ceased.

"One minute." Sam's voice was scratched.

"Here goes nothing." Dean mumbled, fisting his hands at his side.

Lyn focused her gaze on the words Sam had written up days ago, the words the taller man himself already had memorized.

"Should we say a prayer?" Lyn whispered quickly.

"Yeah." Dean responded. "I pray that someday a baseball team out there will actually beat the Yankees."

"Yup." Sam responded to the quip. "That's exactly what she meant."

"Thirty seconds."

Despite the lightheartedness his brother was trying desperately to throw into their situation, Sam did say a quick prayer. _Mom. Dad. If you can help us from up there, now would be a really, really good time to prove it._

Then he looked at his watch again, numbers illuminated perfectly by the full moon. "Five," he began the countdown. "Four. Three. Two. Now!"

Lyn began speaking, low and steady as they'd done a dozen times before. She didn't rush it, enunciating each backwards word with clarity and ease. Sam found himself mouthing the words along with her, closing his eyes against the sight of reality.

Five minutes into it, wind started to blow from every direction, whipping by them angrily. Pre-tornado wind, Sam shuttered. Demonic wind. This had never happened before.

Lyn's voice quivered, she too was obviously at odds with this new phenomenon. Sam cringed despite himself. Lyn hadn't grown up a hunter, no matter how well she worked with them now; she had no way of knowing that this was a common supernatural occurrence.

They should have told her. Warned her.

Sam felt his stomach drop out from under him. This was all going to Hell - again, no pun intended - because they hadn't had the foresight to prepare her properly.

The wind kept up, but Lyn's voice regained its steady tone after a few more lines of the chant. _Thank, God_. Sam thought. Then reconsidered. _Thank you, mom, dad_.

Ten more minutes of howling winds and backwards words, and Sam felt himself steady slightly. This wasn't so bad. Reversing magic was always easier than creating it, he told himself again. All they were doing was releasing the hold the spell had on this town. Casting it had been the real cosmic disrupter.

Then came the blood sacrifice. Lyn slit open her palm just as Sam had done time after time in the last couple of weeks. The moment Lyn's blood hit the ground the howling began.

Deep, guttural howls and screams. Again, they were demonic. These were the sounds Werewolves made as they were shot through the heart with a silver bullet, that spirits made as their bones were salted and burned. Sam heard the Woman in White ripping out his heart in those screams, the sound of the semi-truck as it plowed into the Impala.

Crackling flames that had taken their father's body, Jessica's pleading, _"Why, Sam?" _Bloody Mary dragging herself through broken glass. His head buzzed like it had when he'd been possessed by Ellicott, his hands trembled as if he were still holding the gun, still aiming it at his brother.

Those howling cries brought back every tragedy he'd ever encountered, every death he'd ever witnessed, fought the remnants of or caused. With his eyes closed, he could see everything as well, and while reality certainly wasn't offering up much comfort at the moment, it had to be better than this.

When he pried his eyelids apart, his gaze fell immediately on his big brother. Dean was standing directly across from him, his own eyes focused solely on Lyn. Who, Sam inferred by the way her lips were moving, was still saying the spell. But Sam could no longer hear it.

Him mind was playing a melody of heartache. The Hookman's steel hand scraping against the metal of a car door, Max Miller's Uncle's brains splattering all over his bedroom window as the Winchester's stood by, helpless. The Deva's clawing their way through his skin, peeling relentlessly, the Bender's collection of human body parts, the witch that fed on children's souls.

Suddenly nothing in this world seemed good, fair or right. Nothing seemed worth living for. All their lives brought them was pain. A circle, he managed one coherent thought. The world was one huge circle of pain.

The howls agreed with him.

A crossroads where a human could make a pact with a demon, a serial killer who hunts and kills young, blonde women, even in death. Vampires, Wendigos, curses, possessions, demons.

It was all so ugly. Made the world so pointless.

He looked at his brother again. Dean's expression was almost...hopeful. Sam couldn't comprehend that, couldn't understand what was going on outside his own mind, these reverberating howls. Didn't understand how Dean could be so unaffected.

"Stop." He tried to speak, but could barely hear his own voice. Dean's eyes met his. Lyn was so out of focus now, in his gaze and his head. Sam could hardly remember who she was.

"Stop." He repeated. He was underwater again. Trying to save a little boy who hadn't spoken a word since witnessing his father's death. He knew he wouldn't save him, though. He couldn't save anyone. "Stop."

"Sammy?" His brother's voice wasn't there, only the screeching, but the conductor of pain could read his lips well enough.

Only Sam didn't see his brother anymore. He saw a shape shifter. A creature with Dean's skin and a sharp knife. All he wanted to do was hurt him. That's all anybody ever wanted from anyone.

"I can't..." Words were so trivial at this point; he wasn't even sure why his brain was still stringing them together.

He was watching his mother's spirit destroy herself for her sons, and all he could think was; _why? _Why bother? Why care?

They were dead anyway.

Dean tilted out of focus one last time as the world around him went black. And not for the first time, the last thing Sam could recall coherently thinking was; _God, I hope this one sticks. _

---------------

_"Wars have never hurt anybody except the people who die."  
- Salvador Dali_

---------------

"What happened to him?" Dean noticed absently that Lyn sounded breathless, like she'd just run a marathon and then some. That, at least, was an expected reaction.

"I don't know." He was cradling his little brother's head in his lap, checking his neck desperately for a pulse. "Shit!" He shouted, angry with himself and the situation as a whole. Frustrated to the point of wanting to punch a wall until his hands were bloody and broken.

"Is he-"

"No!" Dean cut off Lyn's hesitant question harshly, not having the energy to feel bad for snapping. "Come on, Sammy." He mumbled, picking up the younger man's limp arm and checking his wrist.

Lyn sat down next to him on the hard ground, cradling her bleeding hand.

"There's a pulse." He breathed, tears clouding his eyes. "He's alive." He followed that statement up with a few gentle shakes to his little brother's shoulder. Then a few not so gentle ones when those proved unsuccessful.

"What happened to him?" She asked again, shaking her head and going on. "It started as soon as I cut my hand."

"I know," Dean said absently, still trying to wake the unconscious mess of limbs dangling around him. "That's never happened before?" He clarified for the sake of clarifying, already knowing the answer.

"No." Lyn shook her head. "All of that was new. The wind, the howling, the clouds rolling in and... Whatever that last thing was."

"That was a ripple in the dimension." Dean said, hands cupping his brother's face. "Remember it, 'cause trust me, you're never gonna see anything like that ever again."

"Does that mean-" But her breathy tone was cut off by Sam's deep grunt.

"Sammy." Dean encouraged the motion when the younger man's head rolled back and forth. "C'mon, Sammy, wake up."

"The hell?" He started, opening his eyes just a fraction. But that was good enough for Dean, who hadn't seen a brighter sight in days. Or months, as the case may have been.

"Close," he chuckled throatily, "El Groton."

"What-" he sat up straighter, pulling himself up until he was sitting on his own next to Dean, the elder man staying close just in case. "What the hell happened?"

"We were hoping you could tell us." Dean replied honestly. "Lyn was halfway though the mojo and you just..."

"Spaced out." Lyn filled in when Dean couldn't find the right words, he nodded his appreciation.

"Then after awhile you started saying 'stop.' Like you didn't want us to finish the spell." A startling thought occurred to the elder brother, pushing a lump to the back of his throat, he asked, "Did you have a vision?"

Sam just closed his eyes and shook his head slightly, wearily. "No, it was-" but he stopped abruptly, opening his eyes wide. "Wait. Did you finish the spell? Please tell me I didn't stop you."

"You didn't." It was Lyn who answered, sounding complacent enough for the time. "I finished it."

"And?" Sam had always been an impatient little twerp, Dean thought fondly. Despite all his fears, crushing hopes and anticipation, he could be nothing but glad that his brother was okay.

"And," Dean answered this time. He picked up his brother's left arm and held the wrist in front of his own face just long enough to confirm what he already knew to be true.

Sam yanked his hand away and studied the watch himself.

Dean looked at Lyn, who was staring very intently at the ground. As if they ever could have forgotten what this had cost them, what they had just risked.

When Sam finally spoke, his words were a mixture of elated relief and transferred grief. All of what they'd lived through - remembered or not - for the last few months, had been boiled down this very moment. This awe inspired revelation.

"It's Two-forty-five."

TBC...

_A/N: Epilogue coming soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I still have one pretty big question to answer. Did I, or did I not kill Kim. I dunno, Whaddya you think? _


	21. Epilogue

Time and Time Again

_A/N: The final part of this seemingly never ending story. To all of those still reading; Enjoy! I was actually pretty happy with the way this turned out. I appreciate all the reviews I've gotten for this. Honestly, after a while, they were all that kept this fic going. And for those of you who wanted an ending, congratulations! You brought this about. Much faster than I would have originally imagined._

Epilogue 

---------------

"_Everything will be fine in the end. If it's not fine, then it's not the end." -Judging Amy_

--------------

They walked slowly through the town. Though they hadn't spoken of it, all three knew exactly where they were headed. They walked slow because they weren't sure they wanted to reach their destination. They were all expecting grief.

"Sammy?" Dean spoke first, the taller man's long legs were setting the pace for their journey.

"Huh?" He grunted, head still buzzing slightly. Now that all this was over, he felt guilty, more than anything else. He'd been so focused on getting out, on freeing himself, he hadn't truly comprehended the consequences.

Lyn's silence spoke volumes in the would-be peaceful calm of the night.

"What happened? During the spell?"

A fair question, Sam had to admit. One he wasn't sure he could answer.

"I don't know exactly." He tried. "I...I've never been suicidal," he picked his words carefully. "But I... that's what it felt like. Nothing but desperation and pain."

"I don't understand." Dean shook his head. "How could _that _spell cause that?"

Sam shrugged. It probably had something to do with his freaky powers, he thought to himself, something in his head that had conducted those elements. "Just a side affect." He said aloud. "It could have been worse."

Dean seemed accepting enough of that idea, as he simply bit his lip and let it go. Sam himself felt shaky, empty. Like he'd spent all afternoon throwing up, and while the post-nauseous trembling wasn't exactly a warm and fuzzy feeling, it was comforting. Because he knew he had nothing left to cause him pain.

He wanted to get in the Impala and drive away as fast as he cold. Crash in a big city for a while. New York or Vegas. Somewhere with lots of lights and noise; a dense population. Somewhere he could feel safe.

But he knew it would be a while before he got his wish. They were just nearing the edge of town now, and Dean and Lyn slowed their steps considerably. Sam had a feeling, deep in his gut - a place that never lied - that told him exactly what they would find when they got to the diner.

He said nothing to his brother or Lyn, though, because he couldn't risk being wrong. Though he knew he wasn't. Knew as if he'd seen it in a vision or been told by Dean himself - he trusted the knowledge he had unwaveringly, but still he stayed silent.

Five minutes and thirty-eight seconds later had that little bell above the door in the diner jingling their arrival.

Five minutes and forty seconds after that, Sam's belief in God was reaffirmed.

"Kimmy." Lyn gasped.

The young woman in question turned on her barstool seat and grinned genuinely, if not a little confusedly. "Hey." She said back.

And in that moment, there couldn't have been a sweeter word.

---------------

"_Don't lose hope. When it gets darkest the stars come out."  
-Unknown_

---------------

There's very little in this world that is always true. With every set of circumstances, every situation, every person, every decision; the context changes. We try to install universal rights and wrongs - in our children, others, ourselves - but its the people who cling to those rights and wrongs, those blacks and whites, like a three-year-old to a blanket that end up lost and alone.

To teach a child to respect their elders is to make them believe that the man down the street with the big white van and all the candy is a man whom they should listen to and trust. This could get them killed. To stick to the moral code of 'lying is bad' is to say that we should protect no one, we should speak the truth, no matter how cold or how harsh, to anyone who should ask. And what will be, will be. What will be, should be, no matter how brutal.

Simply stated; there is no such thing as universal truth. Ethics are forever debatable.

Is murder wrong if you're taking the life of the person who killed your mother?

Is infidelity reprehensible if you're love is dead?

Is doctor-assisted suicide a crime, seeing as the patient obviously wished it for themselves?

Is abortion murder?

Is a lie a lie if everyone knows its a lie?

Is it stealing if you're taking back what's yours?

Philosophies dating back hundreds of thousands of years have been written on topics of these nature, and only one truth had been agreed upon; nothing is ever concrete.

Every person, every second, every life, is different. If you try to put a label on each and every _what if _you'll end up wasting your whole life on one infinite task.

It's an old adage of the Winchester family; _What's dead should stay dead_.

And when they were dealing with zombies, and the underlying death of their father, that rang very true. It's hard to envision, sometimes, what the world would be like if we could bring the dead back to life. No one would die. Ever. The planet would stop functioning and eventually stop existing all together. The circle of life would no longer be round. It'd turn into one giant line of false hope. It's an ugly thing to think about.

But even this - what should be a cosmic bottom line - has its exceptions.

This - the Winchesters in El Groton, New Mexico, the time-reversal. Kim - this is one of those loopholes that appear daily in the world around us. It's something that can't necessarily be explained or even rationalized. Though if he had to try, Sam Winchester would call it retribution. The world - fate, karma - was finally giving back a little of what it took away.

Their mother was dead, and Dean had watched her die - suffered through an unfair childhood taking care of his little brother and bending to their father's vengeful will. He'd left Cassie behind after opening up his whole heart to her; so he could go on without her and save the world. Jo had offered him nothing that he needed and a whole hell of a lot of what he didn't - more responsibility.

Sam himself had abandoned him for a different life. Dean had taken care of him once again after Jessica's death. Dean had saved more lives than current mathematical forms could calculate - including his little brother's several thousand times over.

Then John Winchester had died, and no one needs a reminder of how much that had hurt.

The universe seemed to be always taking from them. From Dean. Expecting too much, pushing too hard. It would only be a matter of time before he cracked.

So in the end, that's what Sam liked to believe, that the world was correcting itself of all its wrongdoings. Offering up an apology, a plea; before it got so bleak and hopeless from Dean's point of view that he threw in the towel.

That's what Sam had experienced during the spell-casting; what would become of Dean's view of the world if life continued on the way it currently was.

Dean and destiny had faced off, fought each other with all they had.

When Dean was happy, something shifted to make that not true anymore.

When destiny tired its hardest to take Dean out, the eldest Winchester came back from the brink, time and time again. Heart attacks, comas; Dean had people on his side. Human alliances that destiny had to work around and often couldn't fight against.

And now they'd squared off, playing every hand they'd been dealt, and it was destiny that had folded. Dean had made the world bend to his will, and somehow, Sam just couldn't find that shocking.

Kim lived so Dean wouldn't give up, and Sam just sat back and grinned. Because his brother had earned it. Because in his heart he knew that this was right. Because he knew there was no universal _always_.

And this time, in this place, dead had no right staying dead.

---------------

_Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it.  
-- Jacques Prevert_

---------------

Five days, sixteen hours and twenty minutes later found both sets of siblings crammed in that one little motel room yet again. Everything about the scene felt right. Dean and Kim sitting on his bed together, close enough to reaffirm existence, but not close enough to be obvious.

Sam standing over his own bed, packing the few remaining things that needed to be packed while Lyn flipping casually though their father's journal.

Conversation flowed easily.

"Everyone else in town seems to be caught up," Dean was saying. "Memory wise. It's hard to say exactly what the long term repercussions might be, but I doubt it'll end in murder or Alien pod people."

"Well, that's good, at least." Kim's hand snaked out subtly to wind itself around his. And Dean smiled. A real, hold-nothing-back smile. Sam's heart leapt at the sight. He wasn't sure exactly what had happened between the two of them in the past week, but he hadn't missed the fact that Dean had been absent from their motel room quite a lot.

It'd been a hectic time for all of them. Going around town, trying to see if the time-loop would have any lasting repercussions. Sam had gone over the specifics of the original spell with Lyn again and again. They'd been holed up in Calvin's Corner for hours on end every day. But still, when night fell and Dean wasn't in their room - coupled especially with Lyn's similar accounts of a missing sibling - it didn't take a Harvard Grad to put two and two together.

In all honesty, Sam couldn't have been happier for his brother. And while a part of him - a cynical, weather worn hunter that had seen too much pain for a hundred lifetimes - was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, a bigger part of him was convinced that, for once in their lives, it wouldn't.

This was their shot at happy. This was _Dean's _shot at happy. And Sam would fight like hell to keep that alive.

"Did you guys really kill a Werewolf?" Lyn piped up, lifting her head from where it'd been lowered, studying John Winchester's messy scrawl.

"Long time ago." Sam said casually. "I think I was only fourteen."

"Yeah," Dean chuckled. "And you screamed like a little girl."

"Bite me." The younger man responded, no real force behind the words.

"This is all so unbelievable." Kim sounded, once again, beside herself in awe.

The night after the spell had been completed successfully, Lyn and the Winchesters had sat down and had a long, drawn-out conversation about everything that had taken place over the last three months, two weeks, and six days.

Kim, while reluctant at first to believe such things really existed, had been rather easy to convince once Lyn made it incredibly clear there was no punch line hidden in their story.

Sam found himself warming up to the brunette woman considerably when she eventually accepted what they were telling her. Taking it a face value and asking question after question.

"Yeah," Dean agreed. Anyone who knew the eldest Winchester would be able to tell just by the unguarded quality of his tone, that he was walking on water. "Pretty sweet, huh?"

"So what happens now?" She threw the question out there like a grenade, and everybody ducked. Sam knew they would have to move on, to leave this town, and soon. While he couldn't deny that's what he wanted - he also hadn't seen his big brother this happy in over a year.

He was the first to answer, of course, it seemed to be his role here - just as it'd been Dean's all those years ago. Peacemaker. Deliberator. "We have to go see some friends of ours. Ash and Ellen. We're taking the spell Lyn created and reworking it."

"To kill the demon?" She clarified. Because yes, they'd told her about that too.

"Yeah." Sam nodded. "Ash and Bobby have been searching for months and they finally found something that might help us."

All eyes looked to him, fascinated.

"It's an interlocking set of railroad tracks in Wyoming. No demon can get in. So our plan is to open it up, just enough to trap the demon, and close it again." He took a deep breath. "Say the spell and watch the sucker spontaneously combust. Just like Jim Paulman did."

"But it'll take some time to work out, right?" Lyn asked, sounding a little scared. "I mean, you can't just go in with my spell and do this, right?"

"No," Dean clarified, speaking up on the matter for the first time since Sam had talked to Ellen three days ago. "It needs tweaking. We're hoping Ash'll be able to do most of that."

"Sounds like fun." Kim said, something unreadable in her tone.

Dean snorted.

"Well, I'm leaving town too." Lyn picked that moment to share. Sam wasn't that surprised at the announcement, and judging by the look on Kim's face, it wasn't the first time she'd heard about this. "I've got a couple friends in Seattle I'm gonna go stay with. If I like it out there I'll find my own place."

"And if you don't?" Kim questioned.

"Then there are two dozen other big cities to choose from." She answered swiftly, then her features softened. "You sure you don't wanna come with me?"

"No," Kim shook her head. "I already have some plans of my own."

"Oh, yeah," Dean's tone held a very slight edge. "What's that?"

"I'm going with you guys." She announced.

All three sat in stunned silence.

Sam, yet again, was the first to find his voice. "And by 'you guys', you mean..."

"I'm going with you and Dean. To this Roadhouse place. I wanna know more about hunting. I wanna know what exactly you guys do." Her words were solid and sure.

Dean chuckled nervously. "Kim-"

"Look," she interrupted. "Lyn only did this spell, only screwed it up-"

"Thanks." Her big sister cut in.

"You're welcome." She smiled cheekily before going on, "-trying to save my life. And now that it's worked, I just can't...let it go."

"This is a dangerous gig." Dean started, Sam could see his hand squeezing hers. "You could get seriously hurt."

"I could get seriously hurt doing almost anything." She pointed out, then dry panned. "Apparently even going to a diner for dinner."

All parties had to accept the truth of that.

"At least this way I know I'll be doing something worthwhile. Besides..." she smiled up at Dean. "I wanna stay with you."

Dean swallowed, Sam could see his Adam's apple bob slightly. He seemed at a loss for words.

"Well it works for me," Sam said into the silence her announcement had produced. "But if you're riding in the Impala, I so call shotgun."

"Don't worry, little brother." Dean smirked, apparently getting over the shock of the moment and reverting back to the perverted guy everyone knew and loved. "I call the back seat."

Sam cringed goodheartedly, Lyn rolled her eyes and Kim smirked a smirk that could easily match Dean's. And maybe it wasn't perfect, maybe they were about head into the biggest battle of their entire lives, and maybe there was a very real possibility of them not surviving that.

That was tomorrow's problem, however, and Sam had every intension of leaving it be until then.

If they'd learned anything at all from this experience, it was to be weary of time. To take what they had _now, _and leave the future alone.

"Maybe we should reconsider our motel room arrangement," Sam threw in, then looked to Kim. "There was this incident, when I was in the ninth grade, Dean had this girl-"

"Sammy," his big brother tried to growl his name warningly, but it came out so pathetically desperate and comical, that Sam just laughed.

"That's nothing," Lyn chimed in. "In high school Kim always seemed to think it was fun to bring guys home and fool around with them in the weirdest places,"

Kim flushed a slightly red color and purposely ignored Dean's raised eyebrows and hopeful gaze. Instead she bit back, "They weren't _weird..._"

"Bathroom sink."

"Wow," Sam admired as Dean laughed and Kim lowered her head into her hands. "You two are gonna have fun."

Looking up, pained expression painted exaggeratedly on her face, Kim asked Dean, "Tell me again why we put up with our siblings?"

Dean chuckled. "Ah, I don't know," he shrugged as the laughing carried on amongst them all. "Something about being lost without them."

"Oh, yeah," Kim smiled, kneeling on the bed and wrapping her arms around Dean's chest, her chin coming to rest on his shoulder. "That must be it."

_FIN_

_A/N: Okay... Well, I guess saying that I'd love to know what you think would be pretty pointless, but since I've got your attention; Review! _

_Now, a couple chapters ago I mentioned a sequel to this I had in the works. Well, that sequel is actually completed and waiting to be posted. It's a sequel that could be read as a stand-alone, as it's not too, too linked to this one - its set five years in the future. Kim is in it, though. And I started writing that sequel a LONG time ago. So I pretty much knew from the start of this that Kim was destined to live. What can I say? My muse likes her. The sequel is titled 'Time Is On Our Side.' It's a one-parter that should be out within the week. And...well... that's all she wrote._

_Sayonara for now! _


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